Waking up on the morning of February 22,2026 was just like any other snowy day in Rhode Island. You wake up and look out your window to see the snowflakes hitting the ground. We knew there was a blizzard approaching and people were getting ready for the rough next couple days to come. If you walked into grocery stores days leading up to the blizzard you would see a lot of empty shelves because people were preparing for the first blizzard we have had in a while. What people didn’t know is how bad the blizzard would be.
February 22 until February 24 was a rough couple of days for Rhode Islanders. During the blizzard, it felt like you could hear the sound of the snow plows driving in the streets and the horrible winds. It was like a train was blasting down the street. It was like every time you looked out the window, snow was falling. It felt like for 2 days straight it was non stop snow. According to Turn to 10.com, at the end of the blizzard, there was a total of 37.9 inches of snow fall at T.F. Green Airports in Warwick. If you looked outside the snow could have been completely covering your door or window.
Due to all of this snow the blizzard cost communities a lot of money. According to X, Providence by itself spent $3.8 million on snow cleanup. Rhode Island spent a total of over $7 million on blizzard response and snow cleanup. People might wonder why the cleanup cost so much. This is because we called Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Vermont for help. Due to the large amount of snow we received, the plows we have in Rhode Island were too small to clean it up. So we asked Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Vermont to get in their trucks and come help us clean up because unlike us, they have big trucks that would move all of the snow quickly.
Another thing the snow brought was loss of power. Many people lost power for a day or maybe even a couple days“,” because workers had to wait until the winds died down to repair the telephone lines. I lost power at my house for a whole day and we had to shovel a lot of snow. My sister said “We shoveled so much snow that my arms felt like they were going to fall off.” For some districts they got a week off from school. For others they were either distance learning or went back into school later in the week. When I asked Jack Sabatelli about his experience he said
“Over where I lived a car ended up spinning out and hitting an electricity pole which caused my family and I to not have power. This caused us to be very cold and it was very hard to stay warm.” This blizzard was a first for some but it also reminded others of the blizzard of 1978.
The blizzard of 1978 was the largest blizzard in the history of Rhode Island until the blizzard of 2026. The blizzard of 1978 brought 28.6 inches of snow. Rhode Island took heavy damage from this storm. It caused over $520 million in damages. It stunned Rhode Island for a week and people couldn’t do anything. The National Guard helped manage the snowfall significantly. When you look at both these blizzards side by side you could say that the blizzard of 1978 was worse but that might be because back then we didn’t have all the technology we have today. If we had that type of technology back then we would probably have been able to clean it all up quicker. So peoples opinions on which blizzard was worse might vary but I would stay with the facts and say that the blizzard of 2026 was worse due to the fact that it shattered the record amount of snowfall we got.
