As a child I remember an epic snowstorm in the early 1960’s in my town of Parkesburg, Pennsylvania. Our town’s light duty snowplow equipment had great difficulty moving the heavy drifting snow. There was a road building contactor (J.D. Eckman) several miles away that had this Caterpillar D7. They were summoned to come and open up route 372, leading to our town, and open up some of the streets in town. My young ears heard the sound of the Caterpillar under heavy load working closer and close to my street. I will never forget standing at the end of my driveway and watching this machine make its way with a huge loaf of snow in front of it. I waved to the bundled-up driver and he wayed back. As legend has it, at one point in the trek the operator of the D7 didn’t know that there was an abandoned car in the drifted snow, and he ended up pushing it a great distance before realizing it. For years afterwards I remember seeing the grouser marks in the macadam pavement all around town. The end.

Bill, thanks for the memories. I am old enough to remember the storm of '49 when we lived in SW Nebraska. It was exactly 3 weeks from the end of the storm until the county road past our house was plowed. I remember it was about 9 o'clock at night when we heard the rumble and saw the lights of the D7 snowplow going past the house. The best part was no school. We had plenty of hay for the cattle but unfortunately it was across a big canyon from the barn. Dad hauled hay from across the canyon with a team of horses and a sled. The horses had to walk across drifts as deep as 20 ft. It was unusually hard packed snow from the small granules and high winds. Snow was too deep to use any tractors at the time.

Must have been about 1952 when I remember the one and only time a CAT dozer going by our NC KS Mitchell County farm to open up after a snowstorm. It was a D7, in my mind at least, with a heat houser for operator "comfort". Might have been that same year Dad had to pull out a Cat grader stuck in our neighbors yard when trying to open up their driveway. Would have used our RD6 but I don't recall that part.

We moved to the farm I grew up on in Feb. 1962. I was 5 or 6 at the time. Way back then, the phone lines were hanging on poles about 10-12 feet above ground.  Our drive way was about a 1/4 mile long running east and west.  I remember the snow piled up to the phone lines on both sides of the drive.  
Bob Shore had a rock quarry at Burden Ks. He had an old D9 that was to say the least, 'seasoned" about every third or fourth track pad was missing.  The township got Bob to run the township and break drifts.  I remember seeing the tracks on the road, pad,pad,pad, two or three pads missing,and so on and so on.