35 Years ago...

[Wooddust]

The Blizzard of 1978 hit. Do you remember it? I lived in Kankakee Illinois and the drift in my front yard started literally at the roof peak and ended in the across the street neighbors yard. People died south of Kankaee on I-57 either frozen to death in their car or trying to walk somewhere in the storm after they got stuck.

 

[Bigg_Redd]

I was 2

 

[bigbarf48]

Nope, well before my time

 

[BrotherBart]

I was 2

The question was do you remember it.

 

[Bigg_Redd]

The question was do you remember it.

Do you remember when god invented fire? I heard he let you name it.

 

[BrotherBart]

Do you remember when god invented fire? I heard he let you name it.

When he said "Let there be light." I went over and flipped the switch for him.

 

[BrotherBart]

The blizzard in the NE in 1977 is the one I remember. A woman I worked with bragged for a month about her husband getting transferred and promoted in his job. To Buffalo. They no sooner than got there when the blizzard hit and she was ready to come back to Texas.

That thing was the national news story for days.

 

[paul bunion]

I remember the one that hit the NE the same year. I lived in CT then. I believe it was a different storm than what hit the midwest. IIRC it came on a Monday afternoon and we got the rest of the week off from school. I had an afternoon paper route, I somehow managed to ride my bike through the start of the storm. As I was getting back home my father drove up in his '66 Chevelle. I was doing better on my bike than he was in the car.

We had a big old Vermont Castings then.

 

[seabert]

The Blizzard of 1978 hit. Do you remember it? I lived in Kankakee Illinois and the drift in my front yard started literally at the roof peak and ended in the across the street neighbors yard. People died south of Kankaee on I-57 either frozen to death in their car or trying to walk somewhere in the storm after they got stuck.

Yep I remember it well... I was working in Great River on the Long Island South Shore... The company almost never shut down early but news came out that the Long Island Expressway was already closed and they let us out. I have a brand new 1977 Chevy Stepside 2WD with bias ply tires and 3 on the tree standard shift. I had to go 25 miles to the North Shore where I lived. I figured local roads where lost of businesses were located was a good idea(very wise decision) as highways buried vehicles and there was no way to get off.
Finally made it to my neighborhood. The main drag I was on was just plowed. However I had to get over a knoll and the rest of the way was downhill so I figured if I could get over the knoll and keep moving I would not get stuck. My wipers were just big clumps of ice so I had to roll down the window and stick my head out the window to see. I made it to the property but could not tell where the driveway was... I just aimed for the lawn as i know if I stopped the truck would remain. Total time of trip was just over 3 hours(normally 30 minutes)

The next morning the snow had pretty much buried my chevy up to the windows. When I dug it out and started it my shifter was jammed and frozen. The snow has filled the space in the lower engine compartment. I ran an extension cord out to the truck and used a blow dryer to de-ice the shift linkage.

My street took several days to get plowed. Work was also closed for 2 more days. The expressway still was closed with dead cars. The cops were breaking windows just to make sure they got people out. I think a few died in their cars. So the trip almost a week after the storm was limited to the same side roads. Sunrise highway was open but only one lane out of 4. The ruts from hardpack was so bad it was like driving over railroad ties. It actually damaged my front end. Som of my co-workers were still snowed in for another week.

Yep by far the worst storm I was ever in....

Anyone else form Long Island remember this?

 

[Wooddust]

Seabert, you are an old fart like me surrounded by these lads with little experience.

 

[seabert]

Seabert, you are an old fart like me surrounded by these lads with little experience.

Yep but this old fart splits wood by hand with a maul and still knows how to drive a 3 on the tree. Hey, I even have an old 2 person log saw that can cut through a 3' round.

 

[Get Wood]

I was living in Huston TX. Got 3 inches of snow, just about closed down.

 

[blazincajun]

The blizzard in the NE in 1977 is the one I remember. A woman I worked with bragged for a month about her husband getting transferred ... To Buffalo. ...when the blizzard hit and she was ready to come back to Texas.

...was the national news story for days.

Yes, I remember, she was news for the day!

 

[red oak]

I was 3 years old. At that time I only cut, split, and stacked 1 cord per year.

 

[Beer Belly]

Yup.....I remember

 

[firefighterjake]

I was 8 . . . so it probably was a big deal for me as it probably meant a day off from school . . . but remember it specifically . . . nope . . . I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday . . . barely . . . for the record it was Great Value brand pasta O-rings with meatballs allegedly made out of some sort of meat.

 

[bsruther]

I remember it very well. It was my senior year of high school and I walked a mile to school, every day and I can remember cursing that bitter wind.
That was the last time I can remember seeing extended temps like the ones we're having now. The Ohio river completely froze over back then. Probably won't be much longer until it freezes over again, if these temps continue.

 

[D8Chumley]

I was 10 but I vaguely remember it. My first truck at age 17 was a 64 Chevy shortbed stepside, 230 straight 6 and 3 on the tree, paid $350 for it I abused that truck like a 17 yr old would and it was just a beast! Wish I knew where it was today. Probably recycled into something else I guess

 

[woodsman416]

I remember the storms of 1977. I was 14. We got hit with 12" of snow, than 2 days later got hit with another 14".

 

[JustWood]

I remember staying home for a few days and when the winds tapered off dad walked to the mill and brought the Pettibone home to clear the drive way. These machines have a very high lift. The piles along the drive were 20' +/-.
Even the big rotary's had trouble clearing some of the roads.
We've had more snow in many storms since then. It was just the sustained winds blowing all the snow off millions of acres of frozen lake that filled in every valley , ravine, crack and crevice that made for massive snow totals.

 

[BEConklin]

I remember the blizzard of 78 very well. I was in college living off campus in New Britain, CT. The governor closed all the roads for something like 3 days.

We lived on the east side of town - in an area that was all 3 family houses, old mill worker's residences. There were literally local bars on every corner so it was a simple matter for us to walk to any number of those bars as there were something like 10 within a mile of us.

I can remember watching snow mobiles get stuck in the intersections where the plow over from one truck crossed the street another truck had cleared.
I can also remember climbing the snow piles along the side walks which were high enough to reach the spikes and climb up the telephone poles - only to jump off them into the snow piles.
I can also remember that I narrowly escaped getting stranded in Boston for a week. I was up there visiting a girl I'd met at a party over the holidays. I got out of Boston on a Greyhound bus just as the first snowflakes were starting to fly.
Though I can think of worse situations in which to be stranded during an historic blizzard - I was still glad to be home when I got there.

As big as it was, however, we did not get as much snow in 1978 as we did just this past year in February with Winter Storm "Nemo".

Here in East Haddam, we had more than 36" of snow...and I mean hard-packed snow, like concrete, not fluffy stuff. Other places in CT got more than 40" in that one storm. I've lived in CT all my life and I have never seen that much snow in one snowfall before. The difference in 1978 - which yielded about 24" max in CT, was the drifting.

And which New Englander can still remember the Ice Storm of 1973? What a friggin mess!!

 

[Fred Wright]

Oh yeah... I sure remember that. Was home on leave when it hit. Woke up to a drift that completely buried the front porch and went part way up the storm door. Had to go out the back door with shovels to get the front door open.

Had a '67 Ford Galaxie sedan, all you could see of it was the top of the roof. My father's car was completely covered. We spent most of the day shoveling and clearing the driveway. Pop got bored and threw a snowball at me, tagged me upside the head. That was a declaration of war. Mom thought we'd lost our minds but we did get the cars dug out.

The state plows didn't go that far out in the boonies right away so we were pretty much stuck at home for days.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

I was 19 at the time, I probably heard about it on the news, but over the years I've heard a lot of those stories of about severe winter storms out in the Eastern USA and Canada. It's likely one of the reasons I decided to stay settled out here in Southern BC where most of the snow stays up on the mountains on the ski hills, where it belongs.

Edit,,, Thinking about it, I think that was the year I bought the Husqvarna chainsaw I'm still using today.

 

[Jags]

Oh yes, I remember it. And I was a fair piece north of you. Just south of Rockford, IL. "Brutal" is the only word that comes to mind.

 

[billb3]

blizzard of 78 yes


also in the early eighties Cape Cod had a nasty blizzard that took almost a week to get the road from buzzards bay to woods hole opened back up