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Remembering the Blizzard of 1978

Sunday, January 20, 2008
BY Gary Brown
REPOSITORY LIVING SECTION EDITOR


Thirty years ago, Stark County was buried in snow long before the Blizzard of 1978.

By the time the storm struck on Jan. 26, 53 inches of snow already had fallen on the area — only 30 inches short of the record seasonal snowfall at the time.

Three inches fell the night of Thursday, Jan. 19, and it continued snowing for the next two days. “Snow tosses whopper,” a headline in The Repository read Saturday, Jan. 21. “6 inches Friday ... and still falling.”

So there was plenty of snow to melt into ice before the blizzard struck suddenly less than a week later. The warming and rainy weather in the interim provided Stark County with a false sense of security.

“Temperatures will remain steady through tonight, becoming slightly colder by morning,” predicted The Rep’s weather report Wednesday, Jan. 25.

At 11:45 p.m. Wednesday the temperature was 45.

By the time people in Stark County woke up the next morning, thermometers read 4 degrees.

Wind gusts that day reached as high as 75 mph. Snow during the storm totaled only 4 to 6 inches, but it made the most of its depth, blowing into and closing ice-covered roads.

Power outages left many county residents stranded at home or in emergency shelters. Schools and businesses closed. Akron-Canton Airport was closed until 2 p.m. Postmen were forced to ignore the old “rain, snow or sleet” saying; there was no mail delivery in Canton on Jan. 26.

Then, just as suddenly, the storm Gov. James A. Rhodes called “the worst blizzard in Ohio history” ended.

“Worst over; city picking up the pieces,” a Rep headline assured Jan. 27. Wind diminished to 20 to 40 mph that night, and to a mere “15-20 mph breeze” by Jan. 28.

The Blizzard of 1978 came suddenly and passed relatively quickly.

But memories stayed vivid for decades in the minds of those who endured it.

http://cantonrepository.com/index.php?ID=396049&originalStoryID=396050&r=

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Any memories to share from this storm 30 years ago?

I was 12 years old, and can recall how "neat" it was to walk from the porch directly onto the snow without using the 3 steps.

I built a snowman that took 5 adult men to lift and set the middle section on!

I too was only 12. I remember no school!
We lived on a dairy farm, and dad took one tractor and went west amd i took another and went east and we plowed the road and all the neighbor's drives. I also remember the pipe that fed the water to the cattle breaking, and we had to build a fire to thaw the ground so we could dig it up.
Mom had two big pot's of homemade soup going, and all us kid's played in the snow for hour's.

Water...yeah.....

Our pipes froze for DAYS!

Seems I remember 3-4 inches of snow.....crippled for days.

An abominable blizzard
For those who remember 1978, this rare, terrifying event remains benchmark
By Angela Mapes Turner
The Journal Gazette
Tell your story
• To describe your experiences in the Blizzard of ’78, go to
www.journalgazette.net, click on “The Board” in the lower-right corner of the home page, find the “Local news” link and click “Blizzard of ’78 stories.”



The triple threat brewing into a major storm Wednesday, Jan. 25, 1978, had meteorologists on high alert. High wind, bitter cold and snow – lots of snow.

National Weather Service meteorologist Joseph Nield can explain the technicalities that led to the infamous Blizzard of ’78: A weak low-pressure system over the Gulf Coast combined with two upper-level low-pressure systems, one over the Southwest and one coming southeast over Canada.

It’s simpler to use the word his colleagues have for such storms: Bombs.

Bombs usually form in other parts of the country, not the Midwest. Nor’easters, which routinely hit the East Coast, are typically bombs, Nield explains.

“It’s a relatively rare phenomenon,” he said.

So rare that the storm forming over the Midwest would be dubbed the Cleveland Superbomb, because the pressure observed at Cleveland was the lowest recorded in the U.S. outside a hurricane.

The blizzard in the days that followed set the bar that all others have been judged in the 30 years since – and found lacking. A February 2007 blizzard drew some comparisons, but “we haven’t even come close,” Nield said.

Wednesday, Jan. 25, 1978

“The whole state is shut down, and it’s going to get worse.”

– Indiana State Police spokesman

At 3:45 p.m. in Indianapolis, forecasters did something unprecedented – they issued a blizzard warning for the entire state, upgraded from a heavy snow warning.

As the snow kept piling on that night, 20-year-old Anita DeSelm counted her blessings that she had made it home from her manager’s job at L&K Restaurant in one piece.

The restaurant at Lafayette Center Road and Interstate 69, near the current GM plant, was fairly isolated, and DeSelm wasn’t too keen on getting stranded there.

No one was more surprised than she when she found herself returning to work the next day.

Someone in the tiny Marathon gas station next to the restaurant called her home, pleading with her to come open the restaurant. About half a dozen people were stranded at the gas station.

“They were out of potato chips,” DeSelm said.

DeSelm, though she lived only seven miles away, had no way to get there in her own car. A nearby farmer picked her up in an “unbelievably huge” tractor and took her to the restaurant.

DeSelm brought blankets and towels and ended up spending several days cooking in the restaurant for strangers, including a truck driver who taught her how to play poker.

Fortunately, there was plenty of food on hand, and the restaurant didn’t lose power. DeSelm and her new friends strategically planned for their snowbound stay, first eating the food that was likely to spoil earliest.

They entertained themselves listening to the radio and the jukebox, gathering tidbits of news from snowmobile riders who stopped to buy cigarettes from the restaurant’s vending machine.

“We really had no idea what was going on,” DeSelm said. “But we had plenty of coffee.”

Thursday, Jan. 26, 1978

“The drifts are 20 feet high. You know how long it takes to plow through a 20-foot drift? It can’t be done in a few minutes.”

– Allen County Commissioner Jack Dunifon

When the Midwest woke up Jan. 26, it was to more than a foot of snow, piled into drifts in some places that made even foot traffic impossible for anyone foolhardy enough to brave the zero-degree temperature.

The National Weather Service in Fort Wayne measured 17 inches, a city record. The Indiana Toll Road had closed its entire length overnight when winds had approached 50 mph or more.

Ted Ellis, now mayor of Bluffton, was working for the State Board of Accounts auditing Allen County offices most days in 1978.

Ellis, like the majority of northeast Indiana residents, wasn’t planning to go anywhere, but where his feet couldn’t go, his voice could.

Ellis had worked for the local radio station in high school and college and kept up the licensing needed to go on the air. He called WCRD owner Herman Zeps and offered his services if Zeps could find a way to get him to the station, just eight blocks from Ellis’ home.

Zeps dispatched a volunteer with a snowmobile to pick up Ellis, who made it down Indiana 1 as far as Market Street in downtown Bluffton, when a hard left turn caused Ellis to slide off the back of the snowmobile.

Eventually, the volunteer chauffeur realized he’d lost a passenger, and Ellis made it to the station to help Zeps keep broadcasting. He continued commuting between his home and the station for several days on a snowmobile.

Ellis remembers the late Jim Barbieri, editor of the Bluffton News-Banner, reading the undeliverable newspaper front-to-back over the air every night during the blizzard, including the comics.

Ellis periodically called the sheriff and other authorities to air their predictable comments: “It sure did snow a lot,” and “Don’t go out unless you have to.”

“Of course, the answer was always the same,” Ellis said.

Friday, Jan. 27, 1978

“Today visibility is better. … We’re able to see where we’re stuck.”

– Fred Fiddler, Red Cross manager

The wind died down Friday, but travel would remain difficult, if not impossible.

President Carter declared a federal disaster as grocery stores were cleared of food, and volunteers with snowmobiles made medical runs and delivered essential supplies. Only on Tuesday, Jan. 31, would schools begin talk of resuming classes.

Fort Wayne Mayor Robert E. Armstrong spent four days in his office, which became a hub of constant activity.

“People were grand,” Armstrong said. “They did a magnificent job of helping each other.”

In other northern parts of the state, 40 inches were recorded. The storm killed 80 people in 16 states, including at least nine in Indiana and seven in Ohio.

The blizzard warning meant many people knew the storm was coming, but they didn’t have as much time to prepare as they likely would today, said Nield, of the National Weather Service.

“The information age has been sort of the revolutionary step that has increased our ability to disseminate information to the public,” he said.

In 1978, no one was surfing the Internet for weather forecasts, Nield said. A Jan. 31 Journal Gazette article about the cost of the blizzard speaks to the times: “Clerical workers for the city and the private contractors haven’t reached their adding machines yet,” a city official is quoted as saying.

Today, a three-day forecast is as accurate as a one-day forecast a few decades ago, Nield said.

“It is dramatic,” he said. “We can model the atmosphere better than we ever have before.”

But all forecasting can do is give people more time to stock up on supplies or get to their destination, and warning or not, some things can’t be planned – ask Larry Wardlaw.

Wardlaw’s grandfather, Fred Schwartz, had been transferred from a nursing home to St. Joseph Hospital in January 1978.

He died the day after the storm hit, but no one in his family could get to the hospital. It would be a month before Schwartz could be buried in a Bluffton cemetery, because the snowdrifts in the cemetery made it impossible to find the burial plot.

A week after his grandfather’s death, Wardlaw found a friend with a snowmobile willing to take him from his parents’ near-north-side Fort Wayne home to get a suit for burial.

In the midst of the sadness, Wardlaw recalls a light moment – his father’s request that he stop by the grocery store on his snowmobile trek.

“They ran out of beer in the house,” Wardlaw said.

aturner@jg.net

OH man, if this is the blizzard I think it was,, it was horrible.

I lived at Rockside Park Towers,, worked in Beachwood. only about 4 or so miles from home.

Was late getting out of the office because of things needing done,, got to my car and couldn't get out of the building parking lot. So I said the heck with it, stayed at the office..

A few moments later, our secretary, who had gone to the shopping center next door before heading home, showed up at the office also.. she couldn't get her car out either..

Both of us, stuck in the office over night.. her husband going nuts and so was my wife.. this was scary on so many fronts...LOL

I was 11. My dad used to work as an aluminum siding (the old stuff, not the vinyl) installer. He had a stack of siding boxes stacked up about 4 feet high in front of the garage. I remember looking outside and seeing the snow piled higher than the siding boxes. Then, one of the siding boxes moved!!! Our big red coon dog took a nap and the snow covered him during the night. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

It was right around my birthday and there was no way family could come over for cake and presents. I was a little bummed about that so, my mother went and put on her fanciest dress and nicest jewelry and we had our own special celebration.

I was 4 when this happened, so I don't really remember it much. I just remember being in our apartment and the snow was taller than me (no short jokes folks, I can already hear 'em! )

I was 9, I remember, Woo hoo no school!
I remember how bitter cold it was going back and forth from my house to a friends.

Besides just 1978, we had "real" winters back then, from the 90's on, not so much.

Wow! My sister is 30 already?

I was only 1 at the time, so I don't remember much. My mom and dad came home from the hospital with my new baby sister right around the time the blizzard was starting. I remember seeing pictures of the snow drifting up to the top of our sliding glass door, and my dad shoveling the driveway with about 3 feet of snow. We lived in Mentor.

I remember the snow being piled up higher than I was tall. Walking down the sidewalk was like walking through a tunnel. Thats about all I can remember

remember it well...junior in high school.....me and the boys walking around watching the snow accummilate....late at night no one on the roads....

We started bumper skiing...we must have bumper skied across have the county...going by picking up other friends....drinking beer and skiing....dang that was a blast.....

I don't remember much about it...I was 7 years old. I have a picture of me playing in the snow, but I don't think I was old enough to grasp what a blizzard really was.

I had just turned 21. A bunch of us at college got liquored up and tied an ironing board to the back of a Thunderbird. We used a towing rope to hold on and we were sliding around the neighborhood. The legs broke off the ironing board as we were going around a corner and my friends saw me fly by the passenger window, completely parallel to the ground. Said I looked like a cross between Super Man and the Abominable Snowman. LOL I ended up in a ditch and could barely get out of it. Great time. Man, I miss those days.

That I would have loved to have seen.. ......

Remember tire chains...put those bad boys on....and ski away....lol

I was a senior in high school at the time. All you could see from the patio door was a wall of snow. My brother and I had a bag of hawaiian and some of our friends trudged through a mile of that snow to get to our house on day 2.

The saddest thing I remember was a picture of a stranded car that had the word "HELP" scratched on inside of the windshield. They found 4 bodies inside.

I was 1.

I think I remember pooping my pants and drinking some milk from my bottle. That's about it.

yeah... I was -3 at the time

I remember being around 9 and we had a really bad snow storm. but that was in the snowbelt so i think we had 2 feet b/c it came up to my waist.

I remeber that well, I was a sr in high school.

One of the Reasons I live in SoCal

As with many, it was quite an event for me.

I was living in Alliance, Ohio, near Canton, at the time. I'd gone to Columbus for a band gig and was only going to stay overnight and leave early the next morning. My friend whom I was staying with is an early riser and was going to wake me around 6:30am so I could make the trip home.

I'd slept on the couch in the living room. Upon waking I saw my friend sitting in a chair reading a book. I glanced at the clock and it read 10am. I quickly sat up and asked him why he didn't wake me. He never even looked up from his book. He just pointed to the picture window. All I saw was white. As I studied it I saw that it was snowing and blowing so much that I couldn't really see beyond the other side of the glass.

I got up for a closer look outside and couldn't get one. I'd never seen anything like it. The TV and radio was saying that all the major routes were closed. I needed I-71 but it was down. I called the Highway Patrol to ask the condition of I-71 and the officer told me that it was not officially closed but he advised me not to travel.

He said it was down to one-lane and that lane was treacherous and could be snowed over at any time. There would be no troopers traveling it so assistance in an emergency would not be available. He said it would take a 4-wheel drive to have any chance of getting through. He didn't tell me it was illeagal to do so but strongly advised me not to try it.

Well, I was strongly determined to get home. I had borrowed my dad's new Ford pick-up for the trip down and although it was only 2-wheel drive I decided since the road was not officially closed I'd make the journey.

Wow. One lane was not an exaggeraton. Sometimes it was down to two ruts that had been cut through the snow. There was literally no one on the road. I traveled for mile after mile at about 10-15-20 mph without seeing another vehicle. Slowly, I caught up to a caravan of sorts which was like five or six vehicles bunched up.

The further we went the worse it got. There were many miles that we traveled at parking lot speeds of 5-10 mph. Occasionally there were stretches we'd get up to 30 or so but not for long. Several times we all stopped to help push a vehicle back onto the path after they'd run off and gotten stuck. Often my truck would get hung up as the snow piled up to the undercarriage but I always managed to work it back and forth and get myself unstuck.

I couldn't believe I was actually doing this but there was no turning back.

There were cars and pick-ups abandoned and completely buried in the snow by the snowplows that had passed by many hours earlier. We all stopped together many times to check for stranded drivers inside vehicles. Each time I feared we'd come across someone frozen to death in their car. We found no one. Whew.

The speed limit was 70 back then. For those too young to remember, you could easily drive 80-85 without much concern of getting pulled over. My drive to Columbus took less than 3 hours. My drive back home took nearly 15. The whole journey was like a Steven King novel where everyone was wiped-out save the small caravan I traveled with.

When I neared Alliance I found I had to turn around on several occasions because roads weren't plowed and I'd be at a standstill. I'd work my way around and approach from another direction only to have to reroute myself again.

By the time I got near my inlaws house, where my young bride stayed while I was away, (we'd been married less than two months at the time), I was so dog-tired and road weary I was completely exhausted. I had to park the truck a mile-and-a-half away from their home and walk through stupid deep snow since they lived way out in the country and their road had not been plowed.

They couldn't believe it when I walked in the door around 3am. They'd been hearing the same thing on the TV and radio that the major highways were closed. No one expected to see me for a couple more days.

The next day when I got to the truck I found it had been snowplowed in half-way up the side. I had to dig it out. It's amazing how far under a pickup truck the snow gets pushed by a plow. When I finally got it dug out and moved it onto the road I saw that both lower sides of the truck had been dented and damaged from hitting the hard snow when we were traveling by deep ruts. My dad was only a little bit upset about that calling me crazy for not waiting it out.

At my age now I'd never attempt such a thing. It wouldn't make any sense at all.

It was foolish. But as I look back on it now, that night I got back, when my young wife and I went to bed, I knew why I was so determined to make the trek.

I was 11 at the time and we had to spend a few days at a friend of my mom's house because our pipes had froze and we had no power. They had to call out the National Guard to open some of the roads up around here. I believe my Grandmother has pictures of the blizzard which shows a road near her that the Guard dug out, it shows a normal 2 lane road down to 1 lane with snow piled 15 feet or so high on both sides for about 3/4ths a mile. We had drifts so high around here that people could walk up the drift right onto the roof of their house.

I was 9. The drifting was terrible. Our house had a drift all the way up to the roof line - about 8 to 9 ft. It stretched about 60 yds. to the west - to our neighbors house - the roof line.

We walked from one roof to the other, all at 8 to 9 ft above the ground. We dug tunnels all over.

My dad worked/works at a hospital about 15 miles away. He called some friends that had snowmobiles. The drove 8 miles to the west to pick him up, then took him the 15 miles to the hospital. Dad stayed there over night.

We lived in the country, back a long lane. Didn't get plowed out for about 3 days - and when it did get "plowed" (actually, the neighbor used a payloader), the piles on either side of the drive were about 10 ft. high in many places.

I was delivering the Repository. I'll never forget how empty the streets were and how cold I was after returning from my route.

j/c

Actually if they want to get technical there were 2 blizzards that winter. December of 77 there was the first one then in January of 78 we got hit with the second one.


45 snow days that year.

I was only 4 years old, but I've heard my parents talk about it all my life. We lived at Fort Devons, near Concord, MA. We had snowdrifts as tall as our one-story quarters. My Dad had to shovel a tunnel out from our front door and dump the dump the snow in the bathtub. At one point there was a loud noise on the roof and it turned out to be a snowmobile.

i was born during it...

I was 6 months old, so hey I was alive then

I do remember in 1993 or 1994 when Euclid and the rest of the schools shut down for 4 days straight b/c of snow and high temps of -5. At night it was something like -20 to -30 or some crap. I got frost bite trying to dig a girl out of a drift in Eastlake with no gloves. Ohh what a teenager will do to get laid.

Well, did ya???

Actually,,yes, but not until her prom that year. That night was spent at Lake West Hospital getting treated for frost bite on my hands and nose

lmao whatever it takes

hehe, well I learned the whole "damsel in distress" thing actually works and also never stick your hands into hot water when you have frost bite. That and Geo Metro's were the biggest POS cars ever made hehe. No matter what happened in the future anytime I saw her she never forgot what I did.
Now that I think about it I wonder what happened to her. Prob married a tow truck driver 3 winters after that

I remember it too well!

I was in Jacksonville, Florida at the time!

We had four inches of snow down here which is not much compared to 2 feet!

Four inches of snow was way too much for Jacksonville as the city closed down for three days!

The bridges were shut down, and they have way too many bridges!

That was a crazy weekend.......I actually walked across a bridge to go to a sports bar to watch a Browns game that night.....very crazy indeed!

Cool story DDub.

jc..

I remember the blizzard, but I don't recall it being all that bad in Avon Lake. But then again, I was 8 and if I had a day off of school, that's all that mattered.

Quote:

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The bridges were shut down, and they have way too many bridges!

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I don't know why but this really cracked me up.

I was 8 years old living in Marion, Ohio and remember my parents putting up blanket barriers over a couple of the doorways to contain the heat. We stayed in the kitchen and dining room and kept the place fairly warm with the gas stove since the electricity was out. I thought it was cool because nothing interesting ever happened in my hometown very often.

I was 16 and was helping my aunt & uncle at thier resturant in New Washington, Cranberry Inn...Pizza place...They had to leave early that day to pick up my little cousin she was staying at a friends house, they called later that day and said to stay put, keep the resturant open with coffee & things for the police & road workers, so there are four boys stranded in a pizza place, plenty of food....2 seventeen year olds, a 16 year old & a 15 year old....WOW did we have fun we ate pizza watched TV served coffee cranked the music...which later got in trouble for, we were snowed in for three days, I do remember we grabbed our sleeping bags & watched the snow blow down the middle of town of New Washington, & watched the snow pile up taking turns running out & shoveling......thats was a snow storm I'll always remember