Tag Archives: Blizzard of 78

Blizzard of ’78 memories

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If you were alive and in East Central Indiana 34 years ago today, you probably — maybe with a little prompting — remember what you were doing.

You were watching the snow fall.

Yes, today — Jan. 25 — is the 34th anniversary of the Blizzard of ’78. Over a couple of days, 20 inches of snow was dumped on our heads (and roofs and roads and … ). Some people think even more snow fell, but that’s the official National Weather Service total. Two days of winds caused roads to close and created drifts up to many rooftops.

I know that it seemed like we were never going to see spring.

I’ve blogged about the Blizzard of ’78 before, but on the anniversary I’ll mention again what an experience it was.

It was infinitely preferable to the ice storm of January 2005, of course, because during the blizzard my family’s home still had electricity. We were warm and safe.

I don’t remember having run low on food — we lived on a farm, after all, and my parents not only had freezers full of meat from our own livestock but also basement shelves full of canned beans from our garden — but I do remember running low on things to do.

Over a couple of homebound days, I read and re-read a bunch of books and comic books and watched a lot of TV. Dinosaur alert: This was well before we had cable TV, of course, so we all spent a lot of quality time with Bob Gregory and other Indy TV figures.

When we could finally get out, we drove through the snow tunnel that followed the approximate route of South Walnut Street to the Southway Plaza, where we could stock up on groceries from Marsh and comic books from Hook’s.

As I’ve noted before, I don’t have any surviving photos from that time. The one posted above I found online tonight. It’s by photographer and writer Jim Garringer and shows a downtown Muncie street scene in the aftermath of the blizzard.

Few pictures — except for the ones in my head — can adequately capture the impact of the Blizzard of ’78, which had the temporary effect of keeping us out of school for weeks.

And had the permanent effect of being frozen, forever, in our collective memories.

Weather hates us: Blizzard of ’78

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Watching bits and pieces of the Hurricane Irene coverage the past few days makes me think of the two greatest weather events of my lifetime so far: The Blizzard of ’78 and the ice storm of 2005.

A lot of people in this part of the Midwest have compared the two in the years since the January 2005 ice storm and most people I’ve spoken with say that in some ways the blizzard was less harrowing. The loss of electric power for most of us during the ice storm — we were lucky and only without power for three or four days, although some were in the dark and cold for a week or more — was worse than being cooped up at home after the Blizzard.

Although I’m not signing up for a recurrence of either, I think I’d prefer to relive the Blizzard of ’78 if I had to choose. The January 1978 blizzard — up to 20 inches of snow across much of Central Indiana, whipped by high winds into road-closing drifts that often reached to the rooflines of homes — paralyzed much of the state.

But aside from keeping us out of school for days, the blizzard had other good (bad?) effects. My family, which lived on a farm in the country at the time, was pretty well prepared and didn’t go without necessities. My brothers had borrowed some friends’ snow shoes and made forays out a few times, walking the two miles to the Marsh at Southway Plaza, the nearest grocery store.

Eventually a snow plow got down South Walnut Street and we managed to get out. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what a surreal first trip we made down the newly-0pened road. The snow had drifted higher than the tops of cars and the plow had made a virtual tunnel, open at the top, one lane wide all the way to town. There were a couple of wider spots to allow cars to pull over for the passage of the sparse other traffic.

In the decades since the blizzard — certainly by the time of the ice storm — I knew that weather emergencies were no longer an impromptu vacation from school and responsibilities. Now we still have to get to work and school. Life goes on, even after a weather disaster.

So I’m feeling for people on the East Coast who are dealing with damage and, long after the 24/7 news coverage ends, will be picking up the pieces.

By the way, I don’t have any Blizzard of ’78 pictures. The photos included here are from northern Indiana and were found on a website about the Blizzard. But they’re very representational of how I remember roads and driveways to be once we had tunneled our way out.