30 Years ago today.....

[HysteryDiagnosis]

I lived through an unimaginable time... the only blizzard in American or Canadian history to be declared a natural disaster or some such thing..... damn cold it was, you couldn't give ice away.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-gRb_MuUgg

[sk8rrobert2]

1. Wow where was this at?

[Systematic Chaos]

6. Along the shore of Lake Erie in Western NY mostly.

If you watch the footage there is a satellite map that comes up where you can see the huge glob of white along the southern shore of the lake. That's pretty much where it all happened.

[jedr]

2. Remember it well;

I ran a small wholesale food operation outside of Pittsburgh, trucks from Land o Lakes out of Ohio would load what they could and when they got to you, you just grabbed what they had and they billed you. The high on January 15 was -13, the low was -15,the only way to get around was chains on my '75 Mustang. Remember putting a light bulb under the hood each night in hopes that you could start your car in the morning. Never enjoyed spring as much as I did that year....but somehow we made it through. Sorry about the rambling, just memories of an aging boomer.

[phantom power]

3. I was 8 years old. The snow drifts were up to our roof.

My parents cross-country skied to the local store, until they got the sidewalks cleared.

[GliderGuider]

4. I was 27, living in in London, Ontario at the time.

It's right in the middle of the Huron-Erie snow belt. The storm closed the city for three days. The Army was out in APCs rescuing people and acting as ambulances. Urban legend says an APC ran over a VW Beetle buried in a snowdrift, flattened it and didn't even notice. The water and power stayed up, but everything else was hosed. People got around within the city on cross-country skis. All the local corner grocery stores were stripped bare. Drifts to the eaves, 2-3 feet of snow on cars. It was a blast!

[Systematic Chaos]

5. 77/78 would have put me in Long Beach, CA and 8 years old.

I have no memory of this one, since I was nowhere near it at the time having left NJ for CA a year previous... amazing photos though, and I really loved the quality of those radio archives. It almost sounded like the whole thing could have been happening right now - especially since there are still plenty of stations on the radio that'll spin "Dancing Queen". :)

Given the conditions and the sheer amount of snow that piled up, the death toll was actually not as bad as what I would have guessed. My sympathies go out to anyone here who might have lost a loved one in that blizzard.

[oldhippie]

7. I was already in Calif in '77, but I lived thru the Blizzard of '58 .....

..... in about the same conditions. I was 10 years old and living in the country in the Hudson River Valley during the blizzard of '58. I remember our two story house was completely buried by snow. My dad and I managed to tunnel out of my second story bedroom window and dig UP to the surface to get some air in the house. Needless to say, no electricity or water for almost a week. Us kids thought it was great, no school! Our road was finally opened a week later, and we dug out from the front door to the road. Nowadays that would have been a national disaster.