Posted on 01/27/2018 7:16:40 AM PST by NOBO2012
MichelleNotThatOne mentioned that yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Great Blizzard of 1978. I liked this part (paraphrased):
Student apartment management to tenants: “God will take care of the snow.”
Student tenants to management: “Then God will also pay the rent.”
Oddly enough precisely 11 years earlier, on January 26-27 1967, another blizzard of monstrous proportions blew through pretty much the same path:
The days prior to January 26 and 27, 1967 were unseasonably warm with temperatures in the 50s and 60s in some parts of Michigan. Then suddenly winter temperatures returned and with them came several feet of snow. An eight-mile long traffic backup occurred between Grand Rapids and Jackson with drivers abandoning their cars and walking to a nearby farmhouse to spend the night. Kalamazoo took the brunt of the storm with 30 inches of snow falling. Eyewitnesses say the storm brought the state to standstill for two days. Dairy farmers had to dump milk that couldn’t be delivered and state troopers relied on the National Guard for transportation through the deep snow to emergency calls.
I remember it well as I was in high school and snow days in the land of notorious “lake effect” snow were very few and far between. It was a glorious time to be very young.
Eleven years later I was out of grad-school and working at my first “real” job when the Great Blizzard of ‘78 descended. If getting a snow day while in school was cool, getting one (two, actually) when you’re working was awesome. In my area (West Michigan) the blizzard began the evening of the 26th and continued through the morning of the 27th. And while there was quite a bit of snow it was the near-hurricane force winds and resulting stories-high drifts that caused the most havoc.
According to The National Weather Service, The Blizzard of ‘78 was the worst winter storm to hit Michigan since record keeping began. Again falling on January 26 and 27, the lower peninsula was hit with 10 to 30 inches of snow depending on location.
Wind gusts were between 50 and 70 mph and windchills were as cold as 30 below. The severe blizzard caused whiteouts and zero visibility for hours.
The Blizzard of 1978 ranks as the #1 snowstorm ever for Grand Rapids and much of Lower Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. The barometer reading of 28.28″ in Cleveland still ranks as the lowest non-hurricane barometer reading in U.S. history. ..Several inches of snow that were already on ground in many areas prior to the storm compounded the blowing snow. As the storm passed over Mt. Clemens, MI, the atmospheric pressure fell to the third lowest ever recorded in the United States outside of a tropical storm.
Still, it was a glorious time to be young.
If you weren’t born yet of course you don’t remember. But odds are good if you didn’t live in the effected area you probably don’t remember them either. That’s because there were no all weather/news channels to cover the event 24/7. That’s right: no CNN (1980) and no Weather Channel (1982). How great was that!? Your local weather man (they were all men then) and newscasters were your only lifeline to critical weather information.
By the time the Great East Coast Blizzard of 2016 came along every citizen everywhere was barraged with round the clock coverage of the Great Snowpocalypse whether you were effected by it or not because…Washington D.C.!
And yet we can’t get so much as a nod from the 24/7 news Leviathans about the emerging Deep State-gate scandal.
Yes, it was a great time to be young, back before 24/7 fake news, Deep State, Global Warming and #MeToo.
We’ve got much bigger fish to fry now.
“Show me on the polar bear where global warming is touching you.”
Posted from: MOTUS A.D.
They say although it may be colder in some areas, the overall temperature of the earth is getting warmer. So global warming is smart, basically. A cunning stalker that hides and waits. When the moment is right, all you’ll see is a killer heat wave before it goes back into hiding, waiting to pounce on its next victim.
Nice pictures - took me back to blizzards in the Rochester NY area in the mid-late ‘60s and I remember walking up the drifts and onto buildings and driving in a snow tunnel. Almost ran into a school bus buried on the road - noticed a orange spot where a chunk of snow had popped off the top corner and was able to slow enough to just plow a couple feet into the drift....
I drove from suburban Chicago to Jackson, Michigan and back in that blizzard to attend a seminar, only to bury my car in a snowdrift 150 yards from my driveway.
1977 Buick Regal with limited-slip differential. Best snow car ever.
I drove from suburban Chicago to Jackson, Michigan and back in that blizzard to attend a seminar, only to bury my car in a snowdrift 150 yards from my driveway.
1977 Buick Regal with limited-slip differential. Best snow car ever.
During the 1978 blizzard, my wife and I were living in the basement of our partially completed home. The basement had an old furnace connected to the chimney, providing the only heat in the house. Our two walk out doorways were simply covered by plywood. The snow after the blizzard was 2 feet deep in our backyard. I needed to have a friend with a bulldozer come over to clear the unfinished driveway. (This was the most snow I have ever been in, coming from only one storm.)
I remember a great story about the storm. I had to pick up a visiting professor at the airport whom I had never seen before. I borrowed a 4WD vehicle from work. This was back in the days where you could meet people coming off the plane, so I asked him how I would recognize him. His reply was: "I'll probably be the only 5 foot tall person on the plane with a dark black beard, wearing a raccoon coat and a black yarmulke. So, of course when the 5 foot tall person on the plane with a dark black beard, wearing a raccoon coat and a black yarmulke walked off the plane, I rushed up to him and introduced myself. He didn't have the slightest clue who I was, and brushed me off. I had to wait for the SECOND 5 foot tall person on the plane with a dark black beard, wearing a raccoon coat and a black yarmulke!
I remember a huge storm in the Cleveland area in the early Fifties. Ray, the local landscape guy was hauling cars up the Brecksville Road with his big tractor. Lake effect snow zone!
For a moment I thought it was about the Great Blizzard of 1888, not 1978. The 1978 blizzard was “proof” we were entering a new ICE AGE!
Ah 1978, central Indiana. My late wife and I were living in her grandmother’s old farm house while we built our forever home next door. I had just driven 70 miles home in the worsening conditions, listen on the radio as they continued to upgrade the storm from a heavy snow warning in the morning to blizzard warning by mid afternoon. I got home just as the snow was really picking up. The house had no insulation so the 50 mph winds penetrated the walls with ease dropping the temps in the house to around 40 degrees, pushing snow through cracks around doors and windows, and building 20 foot drifts on the only road leading to civilization. To say it was scary to be that isolated would not be an overstatement, but at the same time it was kind of exciting and romantic for two 26 year olds. And created great memories and stories we hoped to tell our children and grandchildren someday. Sadly, that opportunity never materialized. Anyway back to the story. Then came the piece de resistance. At about midnight, long after we had any chance of getting out, the old shallow septic system froze leaving us with no bathroom facilities. We had to get very creative to say the least. We were trapped there for 3 days until a front loader from a local gravel pit came up the road and cleared a path to the main snow covered highway. We packed up and made a run for a friends house where we lived for three weeks until conditions improved enough that we could get the septic system opened so we could go home. I had a picture taken by my wife on our road as we left which looked very much like the one above with the pickup in the snow valley. What an experience.
Honestly, it is touching us here in SoCal. We really do have less rainfall and longer summers (about 6 months now) here than when I was young. But so what? Gd created the universe and we do learn about ecosystems and climate, enough to know that CO2 didn’t cause these changes. Our cars didn’t, either. Weather and climate changes. There is no static proper earth temp. I was going to ask a stegosaurus about this the other day...
Remember well the winter of 1968-1969 when Eastern South Dakota was hard hit with some places having 100” of snow. When I came home from college for Christmas break I saw snow drifts 12-14 feet high in places. Spend Christmas Eve watching the Apollo astronauts orbit the moon while outside there was a howling blizzard dumping even more snow. Christmas Day I spent my time digging out the neighbors. 1978 was a bad year too, but nothing like 1968.
Lots of it here in Alaska, 312 inches as measured by the local ski area. Shoveled 2 feet off my deck and driveway yesterday.
Where my house sits was 3000 feet under a glacier 5 Thousand years ago. Damn the cavemen and their SUV’s
Is that how you "feel" about it or have you done any research on that?
Up here in Seattle are climate has changed for the better! Summers have gone from 6 weeks to 3 months. This started about 10 yrs ago.
Trouble is that after decades of excessive rain, the underbrush in the nw dried out creating mass amounts of fuel for forest fires. We’ve had a few years of bad fires and very Smokey skies
The weather used to be so gray and wet, wanted to move away. Now it’s almost perfect.
Weather and ice accumulation over the ages has fluctuated significantly. And humans have always used that for political power.
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