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Few signs of what was in store (40TH ANNIVERSARY OF DA BIG SNOW IN CHICAGO)
Daily Southtown - Chicago ^ | January 21, 2007 | DONNA VICKROY, Staff Writer

Posted on 01/26/2007 10:43:10 AM PST by Chi-townChief

Twenty fours hours before all chaos would break loose, National Weather Center meteorologists forecast “a chance of snow” for Thursday, Jan. 26, 1967.

Had they known then what they know now, they might have called for “a big chance of snow” or “a chance of big snow.”

As in many recent years, the winter leading up to the Blizzard of ’67 had been a mild one, said Mark Ratzer, senior forecaster for the National Weather Service’s Romeoville office. “We were in the 50s on Jan. 21 and 22.”

Two days before the snowstorm hit, Chicago’s high temperature was 65 degrees and the low was 44, both records that still stand today.

But on the 25th, the day before the storm, a cold front moved through the upper Midwest. The band stretched from southern Canada to the Texas panhandle.

With arctic high pressure building north in Canada and a low pressure system developing in the southern states, a stationary frontal boundary settled over the Chicago region.

On the morning of the 26th, forecasters updated their predictions, calling for 4 inches of snow. Then, by mid-morning, 4 to 8 inches.

Though they issued heavy snow warnings all day, their cumulative estimates fell far short of the actual precipitation. In all, 19.8 inches fell in a 24-hour period. Before it was over, 23 inches were on the ground, crippling the city and giving its residents memories for a lifetime.

To have a storm of ’67’s magnitude, Ratzer said, certain conditions have to be in place, namely a stationary frontal boundary needs to exist and there must be a large gradient of temperatures along the front.

The ’67 storm had all the makings of a newsmaker: warm and moist on the southern front, cold and dry up north.

The extreme temperature fluctuation causes a low pressure system to build and increases the jet stream speed, Ratzer said. The result is a wicked blend of wind and snow.

Often, there are warnings of tumultuous things to come.

“Usually rain or even thunderstorms precede such a snowstorm,” he said. On the evening of the 24th, there were thunderstorms and reports of wind damage and funnel clouds over city’s Southwest Side. The gusting 48-mph winds collapsed a building under construction at 87th Street and Stony Island.

Little did Chicagoans know, that was only the beginning. The high pressure boundary, centered over Lake Superior, kept cold dry air pouring into the Great Lakes. Meanwhile, the Gulf Coast states on the southern end of the front fed warm moisture into the storm.

In between, Chicagoans went about their business.

Then the snow began to fall, and fall.

Howling winds and lake effect precipitation led to drifts. Roads closed, cars were abandoned and life as Chicagoans knew it came to a screeching halt.

Ratzer was only 3 months old at the time, but he remembers his father telling the story of how his flight from Montreal to Chicago that day was canceled, so he had to take a train into Union Station. He ran a few blocks to catch the commuter train at Northwestern Station, but just missed it. Stranded, he spent the night in the station.

The 1967 blizzard still holds the record for greatest snowfall in a 24-hour period and greatest snowfall from a single storm.

Source: “A Look Back at the January ’67 Big Snow” by Jim Allsopp, warning coordination meteorologist for NOAA’s National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office. To read more, visit www.crh.noaa.gov/crnews/display.


TOPICS: History; Weather
KEYWORDS: bigsnow; chicago; damare; snow
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Weird Al Gore wasn't around to help us out back then.
1 posted on 01/26/2007 10:43:13 AM PST by Chi-townChief
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To: Chi-townChief

40th anniversary, or as Algore would call it "the beginning" /sarc


2 posted on 01/26/2007 10:45:55 AM PST by timsbella (Mark Steyn for Prime Minister of Canada! (Steve's won my vote in the meantime))
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To: Chi-townChief
Had they known then what they know now, they might have called for “a big chance of snow” or “a chance of big snow.”

They didn't realize that two-year-old Jim Cantore's parents had just moved to Wheaton a few weeks before.

3 posted on 01/26/2007 10:49:57 AM PST by dirtboy (Duncan Hunter 08 - rationalization not required, he IS a conservative already)
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To: Chi-townChief

I wasn't in Chicago then, but in St. Louis, and I wonder if we had a storm at the same time. I remember one of the local weathermen telling a story about how he had made a forecast of "partly cloudy". Within hours, St. Louis was hit by such a bad snowstorm that the weatherman wasn't able to leave the TV station to go home, and had to put up with viewers calling in to tell him about how much "partly cloudy" they were shoveling off their driveways.


4 posted on 01/26/2007 10:53:42 AM PST by Southside_Chicago_Republican (Illinois -- Land of Obama)
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To: Chi-townChief; andysandmikesmom; carlo3b; Inyokern
In all, 19.8 inches fell in a 24-hour period. Before it was over, 23 inches were on the ground, crippling the city and giving its residents memories for a lifetime.

Man, I remember the Blizzard of '67! I was 13 years old at the time, and we lived on the north side. I remember shoveling out a parking spot on our street and putting a chair there to save the spot. I remember pushing cars that got stuck in the snow. I remember jumping off the the roof of our garage into the huge snowdrifts below. And I remember how hard it was for days--maybe a couple of weeks--afterward to get to and from high school. The city buses took forever, and sometimes we would put the thumb out and hitch rides.

5 posted on 01/26/2007 10:55:27 AM PST by Charles Henrickson (Grew up around Devon & Western, went to HS around Montrose & Central)
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To: Chi-townChief
The 1967 blizzard still holds the record for greatest snowfall in a 24-hour period and greatest snowfall from a single storm.

... in Chicago, anyway.

6 posted on 01/26/2007 11:00:25 AM PST by coloradan (Failing to protect the liberties of your enemies establishes precedents that will reach to yourself.)
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To: Chi-townChief
From GIS:


7 posted on 01/26/2007 11:24:52 AM PST by MotleyGirl70
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To: Charles Henrickson

I also very well remember that storm...we lived on the Northwest Side of Chicago, on Kimball Ave, which was a main thorough fare for buses, semis, and it had an on and off ramp to the Kennedy...after the storm had dumped its final snow, the street looked like a parking lot, with buses, and trucks and cars just abandoned, because they could go no further...we had a garage in which our parents parked our cars, but we were at the very end of a dead end alley, and there was no way my dad could get his car out of the garage and down the alley...we had to do without a car, for what seemed like a long time, until some of that snow got cleared away...

People who did park on the streets, shoveled out their parking spots, and then put chairs and ropes and signs up, declaring that spot as their own, and heaven help anyone who tried to use that spot, other than the person who cleared it out...I remember seeing more than one fist fight break out when someone tried to use parking place on the street, that he had not personally shoveled out....

My dad took tons of pictures of what the city looked like during the storm, and just after it...I remember seeing a shot of my mom, walking to the grocery store, pulling her shopping cart behind...the sidewalks had been shoveled off by that time, but all the snow, was just piled up on either side of the sidewalk...it looked like those mounds of snow, on either side of the sidewalk, were about 8 feet high...it looked like my mom was going down the cleared off sidewalk, surrounded by huge mountains of snow, on either side of her...

My dad worked graveyard at Sunbeam on the south side...on the day of the storm, he decided not to drive, but rather to take the 'L'...and when he came home in the morning, after the storm had done its damage, he came home, bringing along one of his fellow workers, as this fella lived out in the suburbs and could not get home...so he lived with us for a couple of days, until he could get home...I know his wife sure missed him, as they had about 8 children, and she was holed up, surrounded by snow, with 8 kids, and just herself to care for them...

So many stores ran short of bread, and eggs, and milk, and toilet paper, as people panicked, and tried to buy out everything, and anything they could, as people were worried that the trucks making deliveries to the food stores, were not going to be able to get through with their deliveries...

That was some storm...


8 posted on 01/26/2007 12:37:45 PM PST by andysandmikesmom
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To: andysandmikesmom
This isn't my picture--I found it just now on the Internet--but this is what it was like:

BTW, notice that the photo says JUL 67. I'm guessing that's when the photo was *developed*, 'cause I sure don't remember the snow lasting that long!

9 posted on 01/26/2007 1:17:13 PM PST by Charles Henrickson (Native Northsider)
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To: Southside_Chicago_Republican

10 posted on 01/26/2007 1:20:00 PM PST by Charles Henrickson (Native Northsider)
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I remember the storm. We lived in Aurora Illinois at the time, and the thing was HUGE. There were cars off the road in ditches, that were completely covered by snow so deep that it looked like they weren't there, except for the antennas sticking up.

The following July, there were STILL big piles of ice/snow that had been plowed aside to clear parking lots from the storm. The one at our grocery store was at least 4 feet high.


11 posted on 01/26/2007 1:25:41 PM PST by Judith Anne (Thank you St. Jude for favors granted.)
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To: Charles Henrickson

The snow did last until the following July, at least in Aurora Illinois, in huge piles of ice/snow that had been plowed to clear parking lots.


12 posted on 01/26/2007 1:27:19 PM PST by Judith Anne (Thank you St. Jude for favors granted.)
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To: Judith Anne

13 posted on 01/26/2007 1:28:26 PM PST by Charles Henrickson (Native Northsider)
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To: Charles Henrickson

LOL! Okay, that picture was taken after the storm, developed in July.

It was a lulu, though.


14 posted on 01/26/2007 1:29:59 PM PST by Judith Anne (Thank you St. Jude for favors granted.)
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To: Charles Henrickson

That might have been it. St. Louis probably would have gotten something from that storm.


15 posted on 01/26/2007 1:43:14 PM PST by Southside_Chicago_Republican (Illinois -- Land of Obama)
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To: andysandmikesmom


16 posted on 01/26/2007 1:46:07 PM PST by Charles Henrickson (Native Northsider)
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To: Charles Henrickson

Charles, thanks for all those pictures..it sure does bring back some memories of that 'fun' time so long ago...

Today, I live in the Pacific Northwest, in Western Washington State, and we almost never get any snow...tho I will say, we got a few inches of snow, in mid December, and everyone freaked out...myself included, since I have been gone from Chicago since 1978...I am no longer used to driving in blizzards and snow storms...these days, if I want to play in the snow, we just go up to the mountains, and enjoy the snow up there...

Of course, thinking back on that huge snowstorm, I get nostalgic for Chicago...that storm was surely some storm, even by Chicago standards....

I am trying to remember when my dad finally got our neighbors all organized, for everyone to dig out the alley behind our houses...it did no good for my dad to dig out the alley, just by our house, we had to get all the neighbors clear down the block to join in a concerted effort to dig out the whole alley, so that dad could finally get his car out of the garage and down the alley...and then, the alley opened up onto a side street, and we know, in Chicago, the snow plows and salt trucks will hit the side streets only after all the main streets have been dug out...I think we had to get a whole block full of people together to shovel out the alley, and the side street...if we had waited to get the side street cleared out by the city, we would have been waiting until springtime..

It sure is fun, remembering that big snow...



17 posted on 01/26/2007 3:28:58 PM PST by andysandmikesmom
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To: dirtboy

:)


18 posted on 01/26/2007 5:27:43 PM PST by good old days
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To: RunningWolf

Looks like a normal winter in NYS to me. We have lots of pictures of the various houses I've lived in that look like that.


19 posted on 01/26/2007 6:12:04 PM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom
We were living in southwest Michigan for that one at about the same latitude as Chicago is.

We got as much snow or maybe even a little more due to lake effect however we did not get the winds so it was just a big steady dump.

As kids we had lots of fun with it.
20 posted on 01/26/2007 9:23:57 PM PST by RunningWolf (2-1 Cav 1975)
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