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Wow. I remember the blizzard of '78 in Dayton, Ohio. I was a 2nd Lt stationed at Wright-Patt. There was supposed to be a 4-star change of command ceremony that Monday morning, so the base held off announcing a closure until the last minute. My car was literally frozen in place, so I wasn't going anywhere that day anyway. Here's a description I read on a website about it:

The most severe winter storm to ever strike southwest Ohio was the "Blizzard of '78." It stands out as the exclamation point in a series of unusually cold and snowy winters during the late 1970s. Compared by some to an inland hurricane, this surprise storm of unprecedented magnitude is notable not so much for the amount of snow it dropped, but for its unrelenting intensity. What began as a moderate rain on the night of January 25, 1978 quickly gave way to increasing winds and rapidly falling temperatures. As the rain turned to snow just after midnight, sustained winds of 60-70 miles per hour and gusts over 100 mph blew the heavy snow horizontally, reducing visibility to zero for the next six to eight hours. The barometric pressure reached an all-time record low -- 28.81" -- as the blizzard dropped a foot of snow on Butler County before moving on. Drifts made many roads impassable and some communities were completely cut off -- reachable only by air. Road crews were forced to utilize unconventional methods of snow removal such as front-end loaders and bulldozers. Due to significant accumulations already on the ground from prior snowstorms, there was no room to push snow aside in many cases, so it had to be trucked away.

Oh I remember that storm like it was yesterday. NE Ohio here and we got smacked good too. Husband used to haul a tanker for raw milk back then and he HAD to go pick up the milk from the farms to take to the dairy. Seven day a week work every single day of the year no matter the weather. Lots of farm equipment having to pull him out of unplowed farmlanes. But he did it.

I hope we don't see another one of those storms

The most severe winter storm to ever strike southwest Ohio was the "Blizzard of '78."

That storm formed as a low in the Gulf, JP, then moved due north, intensifying as it went. It provided the lowest barometric pressure I've ever observed in western VA. It dropped the temperature here 50 degrees in about 6 hours. We had little snow (immeasureable because it was blown horizontally by the high winds) but wherever it finally rested, it was as fine as talcum power from impacting objects before finally coming to rest. I named that storm "The White Hurricane."

To illustrate how strong the storm was, by the time it reached the Chicago area, it had wrapped its accompanying warm front, that formed strung out to the east of the low, counter-clockwise 270 degrees until it was pointing south, in the position normally occupied by a low pressure system's accompanying cold front. Quite a storm.

Here, the blizzard of March 12-15, 1993, was the worst in my memory: more than 24" of snow, near zero temperatures, gusty winds. In places, streets and highways were clogged with snow. Locally, some farm animals and outdoor pets died in that one.