Editor's note: Remember Oct. 4, 1987? "Fall's snowy crippler" shut down the Capital Region with snapped trees, fallen power lines and an early October snowy, sleety mess. On the 31st anniversary, let's look back at Paul Grondahl's story from 2012.

ALBANY — Hardwood trees were the first to snap, towering maples and oaks laden with a canopy of big russet leaves acting as tarpaulins that caught gloppy, heavy snow as it fell freakishly before dawn on Oct. 4, 1987.

Crrrrrack!

The sickly sound, like rifle shots, awakened homeowners on a Sunday morning. A flora carnage was under way. It was a surreal scene.

After a run of Indian summer, forecasters were caught off guard when a cold front blasted through overnight and a steady rain turned to wet snow.

Across the Capital Region, snow-laden limbs yanked down utility lines and triggered a cascading event with widespread power outages and all manner of havoc.

It was an early nor'easter, with 6 inches in most local areas and a foot or more in the Catskills and the Hilltowns. What would have been a modest snow falling without drama through bare trees in January instead rendered the landscape a wintry cataclysm: four deaths, power knocked out to 270,000 homes, major roads impassable and millions of dollars in utility repairs, ruined crops and lost business.

Live wires crackled and sparked with a lethal force on the ground. A wayward dog was reported being "roasted alive" after it stepped on a hot wire.

The ordinary had turned epic.

Hospital emergency rooms were jammed. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo declared a state of emergency. Volunteers set up soup kitchens in church halls. Community centers became emergency shelters.

Schools closed. Businesses shut. The soundtrack was the incessant high-pitched whine of chain saws amid a mangled mess of sheared-off limbs and uprooted trunks.

Many people didn't have power restored for days, forcing those without electricity or hard-to-find generators to revert to a pioneering spirit: reading by candlelight, putting food from refrigerators into snowbanks, cooking in fireplaces.

Thursday marks the 31st anniversary of a memorably weird storm captured in a resonant Times Union headline, "Fall's Snowy Crippler."

"It doesn't seem possible that it was 25 years ago. It felt like we assembled an army to battle it," recalled Keith Goodheart, regional manager for Niagara Mohawk, who mobilized and coordinated hundreds of workers from as far away as Cape Cod and Canada. He had only slept a few hours following his daughter's wedding reception when he was awakened by a call at 5 a.m. to report to work.

"It was just total devastation," said Gary Schermerhorn, who worked for a tree-service company and wielded his trusty Husqvarna chain saw. "A year later, we were still cutting out broken stubs hung up in trees."

At Golden Harvest Farms in Valatie, it was peak apple season and migrant workers from Jamaica were discombobulated.

"They had never seen snow before and they thought it was some kind of voodoo thing," recalled Alan Grout, president of the Columbia County orchard. "We talked with them and finally coaxed them into picking. We had some damage, but apple trees are used to handling heavy loads."

Lyssa Craig was a first-grader at Altamont Elementary School. "It was like being back in olden times," she said, recounting runs with her parents in a plastic toboggan a half-mile down steep and unplowed Helderberg Avenue to buy food and batteries at Stewart's.

Craig loved everything about the storm's aftermath: a week off school, camping out in the house in sleeping bags; boiling snow for bath water because the electric water pump didn't work; making up games; and listening as a family to the radio. "I didn't want it to end because it was so much fun. I remember being sad when the power came back on," she said.

The storm injected drama into daily life and special occasions alike.

Phil and Maria Hanby of Grafton, Rensselaer County, went ahead with their wedding at Sacred Heart Church in Troy although it had no power and only 100 of their 250 invited guests were able to make it to the ceremony, illuminated by candles.

The horse-drawn carriage they rented canceled. Not one of the four videographers they hired showed, although the wedding photographer was there. The organist couldn't play without electricity.

"Everyone hummed 'Here Comes the Bride' at the church," Phil recalled. He was 24, she was 23 and they had spent months planning their perfect wedding. They weren't about to let a crippling snowstorm ruin it.

They found buddies with four-wheel-drive trucks to transport the bride and bridesmaids. Two limos arrived for the guys at Phil's West Sand Lake apartment. "The limos kept getting stuck and we had to get out in our tuxes to push," Phil recalled. The American Legion in Wynantskill had a generator. The reception went off without a hitch, including a refund for the 150 no-shows.

"It was our first test as a couple, and we handled it well," Maria said. She works for the state and he's employed at a paper mill. They have no children of their own, but are foster parents to a 13-year-old boy they hope to adopt.

They've made plans to celebrate their 25th anniversary on Thursday, a camping trip to Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. "It'll probably snow," Maria said.

It was no joke 25 years ago for 14-year-old Fred Beglia, who had spent the night before the storm camping out in the Mallett Pond State Forest with his older brother, Mike, near their home in Summit, Schoharie County.

"We had a campfire, went to sleep like a normal night and when I woke up in the morning the tent was really close to my nose and I didn't understand why," recalled Beglia, who is now executive director of the George Landis Arboretum in Esperance. He saw 18 inches of snow, bent-over trees and branches littering their campsite.

The brothers packed their gear and trudged a couple miles to their car. It was stuck, and the road was impassable. They returned a few days later to free the vehicle.

History is etched into the gnarled limbs of great, old trees that weathered the storm. Two mighty 80-year-old ash trees that tower 140 feet above the Normanskill Farm on the outskirts of Albany where Tom Gallagher lives are on borrowed time. "They've died a long, slow death," said Gallagher, who's worked 37 years for the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Albany County. Three of the ashes were cut down 15 years ago and two more will probably be dropped before winter comes. Insect and rot set in as a result of damage from the 1987 disaster.

There's nothing like a big storm to quicken the pulse of journalists. The Times Union in Colonie had no power and no way to get out a paper. Would it be the first time, after publishing every day without exception since April 21, 1865, that the paper failed to publish?

Not on Editor Harry Rosenfeld's watch.

The rival Troy Record stepped in to help its stricken competitor thanks to a gentleman's agreement common to the industry. The Oct. 5, 1987 edition was printed on the Record's press and marked another first: the Hearst's morning Times Union and afternoon Knickerbocker News shared the same masthead in a never-repeated combined effort.

Only a few staffers are still on hand who worked on that historic edition.

Jack Palella, a printer foreman who's been at the Times Union for 41 years, was called in on his day off.

"I got there and the building was dead," Palella said. He and Bill Kelly fished around in the composing room with flashlights to rescue type they had already prepared. They grabbed the tools of their trade — pica poles, X-Acto knives, waxers — and worked alongside the Record printers.

During their late-night toil to paste up the pages of what became the iconic "Fall's Snowy Crippler," a collector's edition, Palella twice drove back from Troy to the Times Union's plant to fetch more type squirreled away.

Palella drove a Camaro, trunk loaded with sandbags, and he fishtailed around snowy curves as he raced to get out the first draft of history.

The snow melted in a few days. The storm became old news. The profound had returned to the profane.