So, now it's snowing.

And by most forecasts, it is going to keep snowing for a while, maybe until we hit the record books.

Even before it started snowing in earnest Monday, people with a big stake in the storm, like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, were predicting this could be the Big One, the biggest ever in the Northeast.

Yikes.

To get a handle on just how big that might be, I ventured Monday into The Day's snow archives to remember what some of the other contenders for the Big One title might be.

Needless to say, it was a slog. I couldn't even begin to carry back to my desk all the clip files from the last 30 years marked Weather: Winter. We write a lot about the weather, especially big snowstorms.

Still, through all the news narrative of so many years of big snowstorms, only a few stand out as all-time greats.

There have actually been some blockbusters in recent history: 1996, 2006, 2010 and 2013.

But the modern, 20th Century record was set in 1978, a winter storm that claimed 100 lives and caused $500 million in damage. Many people might remember it as the first storm to close all roads to traffic since the days of horses and buggies.

The National Guard was called in to help restore order. Coastal communities flooded badly in the new-moon tides. Trains stopped. Ships at sea sank.

In many ways, though, the preamble to the 1978 blizzard was very different from the one this week. That winter had already been a snowy one - the roof of the Hartford Civic Center had collapsed because of heavy snow - and the forecast was relatively benign.

Oh yes, many people thought when they heard the prediction for that day in early February: more snow. And then it snowed and kept snowing. Driven by hurricane-force winds, the snow raged on for 33 hours.

But the Big One to beat in the Northeast is still what came to be known as the Great White Hurricane of 1888.

That's probably the one that has Mayor de Blasio worried, since it hit New York City especially hard. Back then, a shot of whiskey was considered a healthy brace against the cold, and many drunken New Yorkers ended up falling into snow drifts over their heads.

The Brooklyn Bridge closed and lives were lost as people tried to make their way across a frozen portion of the East River.

That storm raged for three days, eventually claiming 400 lives.

Like this one is predicted to, the Blizzard of 1888 just kept coming.

"During the day it had gone from bad to worse, like a spendthrift going through his fortune," The Day eventually reported on the opening hours of the blizzard.

It snowed for a long time. Then there was a lull. Then it snowed for 18 more hours.

"Last evening, the stores closed early and all meetings were postponed, mostly because no one with enough mental capacity to be at large thought of venturing out on any mission if less important than life or death," the newspaper wrote.

Today, the newspaper's report is not very different, if a little more plainly said.

Groton was shut off from New London then, because the ferry across the Thames River stopped running. The Day also reported it could not carry much news from the rest of the world, because telegraph lines were down.

There were no reports from Washington at all, an editorial explained.

"This is not the first instance when the absence of Washington news has been in the nature of a blessing," the editorial suggested in a little post-storm stab at levity.

The Day also wrote a lot about the Blizzard of 1978 and the cleanup. There were the usual complaints about the quality of snow removal in New London, and the city engineer wrote in to defend the way the streets were cleared.

The newspaper also published a series of essays on the storm from sixth-graders forced to spend the night at their Mystic school when their school bus couldn't make it through the snow.

One student who spent the snow day at home wrote about his experience in a brief essay:

"When my neighbor opened the front door, the dog looked outside, then ran back inside. ... My mother and father played cribbage all the time the blizzard was going. My brother was a pain, as usual."

So, here we are, at the threshold of what might become the Big One.

Some of us, I'm sure, are playing cribbage.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: DavidCollinsct