“Two destructive storms launched 1978; a hurricane in January and a blizzard in February. The hurricane wreaked havoc in York County. The blizzard, a thirty-three -hour nor’easter that stalled over New England and would be called the “blizzard of the century,” brought near-hurricane-force winds and pounding seas and dropped almost twenty-seven inches of snow. People were trapped in their homes by fifteen-foot snowdrifts. Motorists were stranded on the Maine Turnpike. At Kennebunkport on Goat Island the wooden walkway between the keeper’s house and the lighthouse ‘folded like an accordion’ and was swept to sea just minutes after keeper Marty Cain walked through it. His family would be taken off the island by helicopter.”
Joyce Butler in “Kennebunkport, the Evolution of an American Town”