Meteorologists and meteorology enthusiasts gathered to look back on the catastrophic Blizzard of ‘78 at an event organized by the Blue Hills Observatory in Milton on Saturday.

“This was the weather event of our lifetime,” Dr. William Minsinger, president of Blue Hill Observatory, told attendees.

The event featured keynote addresses from Robert Thompson, the head meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Boston branch and Louis Uccellini, the director of the National Weather Service. There was also a panel discussion with current and retired meteorologists from WBZ WCB 4, WCVB TV 5 and WeatherBlast. Speakers spoke to the rapt, sold-out audience about what made the 78 storm so unique and examined how forecasting technology has improved over the decades.

Bob Copeland, one of the panelists, already had more than 20 years of experience before the blizzard. Still, he said he was surprised by the storm’s impact.

“It was the biggest storm that I had ever experienced either as an observer or as a broadcaster,” he said.

He left work at 2 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 6, the first day of the storm, just as the snow was starting. He got home just in time.

“It came in like a wall,” he said.

Misinger listed several other big storms from the 1960s onward and asked what made the February, 1978 storm stand out. One reason, he said, was the massive amounts of coastal damage. He showed photos of house washed off their foundations and the iconic Motif Number 1 fishing shack in Rockland, which was dubbed “the most painted building in the world” before the storm washed it into the ocean.

“This is really what made the storm so remarkable,” he said.

At the time, Minsinger, was a medical student at Boston University. Around the same time Copeland was heading home, Minsinger went to Brockton Hospital for a presentation. After the 45 minute lesson, “We lifted the curtains and our mouths just dropped open,” he said. Enough snow had already accumulated to trap cars on the road.

When he left the hospital at 4 p.m., there were no cars on the highway except his own.

“It was really an eerie feeling,” he said.

Thompson said that even if other storms exceed it in individual metrics like wind speed or snowfall, the Blizzard of ‘78 remains the overall most impactful storm in living memory.

At the time, Thompson was a meteorology intern in Albany, which meant he was on the fringes of the storm. But that April, he visited his parents in Cohasset to help clear away debris from the storm, which still remained months later. His father took him to Hull to view the devastation, which shocked him.

“It looked like what you’d expect from having an EF4, EF5 tornado come through,” he said, using the abbreviation for the Enhanced Fujita, which meteorologists use to measure the strength of tornadoes on a scale of one through five.

Uccellini was living in Wisconsin during the blizzard. He said he considered flying to New England before the storm to experience it firsthand but ultimately chose not to.

“That was probably the storm I will forever be disappointed about missing,” he said.