You don’t have to look far to see a snow storm bringing out our best

PITTSBURGH — A little more than 75 years ago, my father and a handful of friends, all sons of Italian immigrants, hitched up their sleds and rode them from the top of the city of Pittsburgh’s Summer Hill neighborhood slopes onto East Street during what was later called the Great Appalachian Storm. That superstorm on the Thanksgiving weekend of 1950 was one for the books, causing tremendous suffering and hardship. But it brought out the best in humanity, too.

The Category 5 storm was slow-moving, battering the lower Appalachian mountains, the Ohio Valley, the Great Lakes, and the entire Northeast with staggering snow totals that still hold the record today.

Regional snowfall index in the Northeast United States and Ohio Valley for Nov. 22-30, 1950.