I didn’t know there was a blizzard of '78. I was 16 at the time. Looking on Wikipedia I see Detroit (nearest US city to me at the time) got 8 inches.
No wonder I don’t remember anything unusual.
I sat on the roof! Okay, I sat -near- the roof. My folks like to show the picture of my two older brothers (who would’ve been 11 and 12 at the time) sitting on the roof, having climbed up a snow bank to reach, and me slightly lower on the bank, as I was a little scared about sliding off the roof and falling.
I happen to love watching falling snow, and almost always have, so that winter was pretty neat for me.
I was a ten-year-old boy, at home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, enjoying the two-week school holiday. Snow days are what children live for at that age.
Of course, it really sucked that the snow was so deep and the wind chill so low that we couldn’t even go outside and play. I recall that the temp was below zero for quite some time.
My dad had gone in to work, and he ended up stuck there for about a week. Things must have been getting pretty funky in cubicle-land after folks had been loafing around in the same pair of skivvies for a week. And I imagine the snack machines probably went dry by the end of day three.
I was in Michigan, 8 years old, and knocking out my front tooth sledding down a giant hill of what had previously been a barn. Lesson of the day: Don’t sled face-first down a hill made of old wood unless you really don’t like your teeth, regardless of how much snow has fallen.
I still miss that tooth, 2 bridges later.
I was 16 and to be honest, no big storm stands out in my memory from that year.
I was nine and it was the greatest snowstorm ever. I must have been just the right age.
We had about four and a half feet of snow – almost up to my eyes. By the time my parents shoveled the front walk and driveway, the snow was way over my head – walking down the walkway was like being in a deep trench.
After my dad shoveled the back deck, the snow came up to the edge of the deck (this was the second story of the house). It was a little packed down, so I walked out on it. I got about five feet from the deck and then sank up to my chest and got stuck and cried while my parents tried to help me out.
We lived on a dead end street that didn’t get plowed for a few days. When they finally got to us, it was still too deep for the plows so the town had to use bulldozers and backhoes to dig us out. Then the snowbanks were about 15’ high and all the kids in the neighborhood build an elaborate system of tunnels through them and we had snowball fights and brought snacks and ate them in our snow caves.
Man that was a blast.
I was in Jr. High in suburban Chicago.
I don’t think we got any snow days. I remember the school buses weren’t running, but anyone who lived close enough to walk still had to show up. Of course I lived a half block from school :rolleyes:
A lot of snow, but overall I don’t remember it being that big a deal.
Wisconsin.
16 yrs old.
Freezing my hoogoolies off!
I was 10 and in Texas. My folks drove around taking pictures of it and I remember us sledding down every incline we could find. School was out and it was a glorious time.
Never heard of a blizzard of '78, but I was busy not yet being born.
Erie Pa, 8th grade. Ten days off from school as the city dug out, one side of our house had snow as high as the gutter. Fond childhood memories, an unexpected mini vacation!!! Ten days, no school we had a blast.
Jr. High in Green Bay Wisconsin. Blizzard? So? There better be twenty feet by midnight or you’re still walking to school tomorrow.
We were in Owensboro, Ky which got hit pretty damn hard compared to what’s normal for the area. Being 2 at the time, I don’t remember a bit of it, but my parents have a picture of me and my brother out in the yard that winter with the snow up to my armpits.
Oh, what a great topic. I remember this storm well. I was from Florida but went to college in Ohio and at the time was living in an old Victorian college-owned house with inadequate windows. I remember lying in my bed about three feet from the window in the morning and wondering why I was sooo cold. When I finally opened my eyes I saw that there was snow on top of my comforter, snow on the floor–snow everywhere! The wind was so strong that it blew snow through the window frame. I woke my roommate up and we started screaming and threw on some clothes and as we were getting dressed the window blew in, just whoomp! blew in and because it wasn’t glass–it was fiberglass or something–there weren’t shards, but still now our room was a wind tunnel and we ran out screaming, half-dressed. Our RA called maintenance and they came and boarded up our window, and when I went back into the room a glass of water I had left next to my bed was frozen solid.
Classes were cancelled that day for the first time in about 75 years or something, and when we walked to the cafeteria for lunch (because we weren’t allowed to cook in our rooms), the fluid in our eyes froze, our noses ran and froze . . . my God, it was unbelievable.
:eek: Traying? We did that in my college, too! We must be about the same age–we were traying on the snow in adjacent states!
We had just moved to West Lafayette, Indiana from Madison. I found that Indiana doesn’t take care of snow quite the way Wisconsin does.
I was at work. The Governor declared that all state roads were closed, but it was just a big snowstorm. Nobody that I know got the day off, though some who lived more than 30 miles from their job stayed home. We’re used to snow, we have good snowplows. It wasn’t a big deal. My company wasn’t anything essential, we made office equipment and my division only did R&D.
In the last 35 years, I only recall one day that I couldn’t get to work due to snow. My car had too much horsepower and had fat summer tires on it. On plowed roads it would immediately sit in one place and spin the tires if there was no snow beneath to give traction. I gave up and went home when I ran out of unplowed sidewalks to drive on.
What state, pray?
I was in eighth grade and we had off. We three sibs trudged across the unplowed streets and into Van Cortlandt Park. I remember my 8-yo brother having to crawl to get around, since he was so little he sank to his chest with every step. We had a great time and Dad took some wonderful silent movies. We had a lot of fun falling straight backwards because the snow was so deep we couldn’t get damaged, and Dad has some great moments of the three of us rolling around, sometimes all three at once.
School was out for a week IIRC. NYC was a cheerful mess because the budget crisis had led us not to worry about getting services like plowing anyway.
I was 10, and it was AWESOME. I lived about 20 miles SE of Boston. 2 ft of snow. School closed for I dont know HOW long.
The plows gave up trying to plow my neighborhood. unfortunately they gave up right at our driveway - there was a 15 ft high pile of packed snow at the bottom of the drive.
My dad got stuck at work for 4 days - luckily he worked in an industrial park, which inluded a Star Market warehouse. The warehouse dudes gave food to everyone.