This past weekend a northeasterly blizzard, named Nemo, roared across the outer edge of the Gulf of Maine and buried the Maine coast and islands with over 30 inches of snow and then whipped its icy cargo into drifts six and seven feet high to help us all with upper body strength exercises.Weather makes you humble. Weather also makes you remember—was this the worst storm, or the coldest day, or the heaviest snowfall you can remember? Or was it not as bad as when you were a kid and had to walk to school on days like that?

The baselines I use for winter storms were the Groundhog Day storm of 1976 and the January 1978 storm two years later. During the Groundhog Day storm, it happened that there was a small crew overwintering on Hurricane Island, I suppose to prove it could be done. At the height of the storm, the crew crawled out of the southwest end of the island and took a picture of the monstrous seas piling up across the cove on the island’s southerly shores. The picture shows waves cresting over the tops of the trees along Hurricane’s southern rim.

Now, I have stood under those trees and eyed them as a forester would; they are not the most iconic specimens of their species, since they are gnarled and scraggly and the best of them does not exceed 50 feet in height, but still”¦that was a big storm to send waves breaking over those trees.The weird thing about the January storm of 1978 was that it began blowing from the southerly quadrant. With northeasterlies, you know that sooner or later they will blow you down if you are foolish enough to build a dock or house exposed to their fetch. Northeast beaches are, rather, where you go to hear the booming music of huge granite boulders rolling into each other like tympani in a nature’s orchestra.

But in 1978 it was different. The way the winds clocked around this massive low-pressure cell produced 60-knot winds that built from the south for more than 12 hours before they turned around with a vengeance and blew from the north after the center of the storm passed over us.

Harbors got pasted from both directions. Criehaven lost its breakwater and all the wharves along one side of its harbor were swept away. Nearly wiped the fishermen off the map.

Another fisherman friend in Pigeon Hill Bay, east of Petit Manan, told me about his vigil as his lobster boat rode out the gale on its mooring.

The storm came on a moon tide, which was higher than normal to begin with. It blew out of the south all night and throughout the morning and piled a huge charge of water way up into the bay and crammed it into the mouth of the Narraguagus River. Then the eye passed over the bay almost exactly at the turn of the tide at noon, having caused maximum damage to south-facing shores, and began immediately blowing like a banshee from the north.

The lobsterman’s punt, which had been tied to the top of a piling at the wharf in the lee of the southerly gale, was left hanging vertically by its painter 20 minutes later, and pounding against rocks at the base of the wharf.

Such was the force of the wind change in the immediate increase in pressure over the frothing sea during that storm.  But these were nameless beasts, at least as far as the Weather Service was concerned.

Now that we are naming northeasterlies, it is worth reminding ourselves that Nemo need not conjure up a little tropical fish in a Pixar animation. It is better to think about the intemperate nautical character who wrestled a giant squid 20,000 leagues under the sea, while the sea gathered itself up and lashed out at his self-designed vessel.

Nemo came with a record snowfall—31.9 inches in Portland and gusts that topped 70 mph. Nemo broke Portland’s old snowfall record, not by a little, but close to a half foot. Nemo’s winds and snowfall record, however, are less consequential than either the gales of ’76 or ’78, which will remain my benchmarks for measuring storms.

What I will remember most about this winter, however, is an Arctic wobble in the jetstream that kept Alaska basking in warmth (threatening the Iditarod) while bathing the upper Midwest and northern New England in an icy bathtub. For two long weeks.

It’s not really the temperature that gets to you; it’s the dispiriting fact that the reading on the thermometer does nothing to account for the lacerating winds that cut so thoroughly through your bones that they could be sawn in two and not even cause a drop of blood to flow.

The group of older gentlemen who meet in front of the post office every morning in the dark to oil the joints before the day begins had in previous winters adopted a pair of sensible rules, known as the 20-20 rule and 10-10 rule. You do not go running if the temperature is below 20 degrees and it’s blowing more than 20 mph. Even more imperatively, if it’s below 10 degrees with 10 mile an hour winds, you could freeze something really important south of the border, so better wait it out.

But when you are facing whole weeks of wind chills in these ranges, what is a grown man supposed to do? So you go out anyway because the beast inside needs its exercise, and besides it helps the remainder of the day seem warmer.

Philip Conkling is president and founder of the Island Institute.