Wasn't that like a hurricane with snow?
It should be noted that there were two different storms in 1978 that are being discussed. The Great Lakes blizzard took place on Jan 26, 1978, while the east coast blizzard happened two weeks later around Feb 6-7, 1978. They were both very severe storms in the regions affected but there was no overlap of blizzard conditions. By the time the second storm was done, about half of the U.S. population east of the Mississippi had experienced one or the other. They were both considerably worse than the two recent storms which happened to occur in the reverse order and within four days of each other. The only place that is probably doing worse this year is Buffalo NY but they had a much worse blizzard in 1977.
More blizzards in history.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/?n=biggestsnowstorms-us
(Excluding Western U.S. storms along the Rocky Mountains and Intermountain West, and purely lake-effect snow events.)
And I remember some doozys between these dates!