Icy Torrents and Collapsible Roofs Give Examination Blues New Theme

Uncounted bruised rumps and one crushed roof joined the weather's victim list yesterday in the watery aftermath of the worst ice and snow blitz to hit Cambridge in a generation.

The storm has bombarded the area with a weight of 45 pounds per square foot, according to an estimate of the Blue Hills Observatory of Harvard, splitting the roof of Hollis Hall yesterday, and sending ice water cascading down the four story stair well.

Waste paper baskets proved ineffective in stemming the cold shouldered flood as it ripped away ceilings and laid a slippery coat down Hollis stairs.

Swamp conditions froze traffic around the Square and made sidewalks nearly impassable as a driving rain drove the 37 inches of snow, a record depth since 1930, into a nine inch layer of ice.

The storm was ill-timed for exam harried students. Bounced, soggy posteriors and benumbed fingers found little succor in the hard seated exam halls. As one dazed undergraduate, whose name is withheld because he couldn't remember it, so succinctly summed it up. "We was got by the ice."

The Blue Bills Observatory sees no let-up in the stage. The thick, hard cover is not likely to be easily disposed of," it announced in its report last night.

The substantial blanket not only reflects the sun by day, but traps any heat extant in the earth and pavements, depriving the air of warmth. This imprisoned heat is constantly eating away at the bottom of the ice sheet, the Observatory notes, and streams, sewers, and gutters are swelling by the hour.

The Observatory is looking forward dispassionately to a record snowfall this year. Although they pretend no connection between the fall of the first and second half of the winter, the 29 inches necessary to equal the 113 inch record of 1922-23 seems within close reach.