It was great and epic in New England as well.
A great happening for a kid.
Was a kid when Chicago got hit in 67. Best winter ever!!!
But bookended on each side of that storm were two of the biggest snowstorms to ever hit New England. On January 20th, Boston recorded 20 inches of powdery snow. It was even called the "storm of the decade"
But not for very long. During Feb 6-7, the Blizzard of '78 (as New Englanders know it) dumped up to four feet of snow and devastated many coastal areas with massive flooding due to the wind-whipped waves that came ashore.
That was quite a winter. I was in high school that year and our teachers all told us that we'd end up going to school through July to make up for all the snow days we had.
But that turned out to be just a schoolyard scare (like the metric system they kept threatening to impose on us). They ended up extending the school day by about an hour and a half to make up for the lost time so we could start our summer vacation on time. But that wasn't done so much for the students, it was the teacher's union that pushed for that measure. Most of that hour and a half was done in the study hall.
Yup, I lived in Mass and shoveled snow every day for money until it got as tall as me. There were even “I survived the Blizzard if 78” T-shirts.
My sister was coming home from work going up a hill and couldn’t make it but managed to pull off into the side of a driveway. Then the snow plows completely buried her car. My dad stuck a sign in the snow that said buried car. Wen went and dug it out and it started right up. 71 Camaro.
I was a 9 year old kid growing up in Western PA that winter, and it was a blast. We had gone on vacation to Ocean City, MD the summer prior to that, and my parents double exposed some 8mm films taken that summer with us playing in the snow that winter...so we have some old home movies of us kids playing in the snow drifts in our swim suits, and building snowmen on the beach :-)
I was flush with cash for the summer after the winter of ‘78.