I lived on the North side of Chicago during that blizzard and the streets looked exactly like that: snow was compacted even HIGHER, and people were snowshoeing over the top of it, down them middle of sidestreets with their cameras, taking pictures like tourists in a foreign land.
The term "cabin fever" was bandied about for the first time in my memory. Nobody could very easily leave their houses or apartments. My wife and I took to sleeping late that week, and would get up feeling kind of spacey or high, and watch the newscasters in that frame of mind, and they all started to look like very comical characters indeed. But the blizzard started for real in Chicago on New Year's Eve, so we think of it as the blizzard of '79.
But it continues to come down here in Allendale NJ. My wife called from the supermarket 5 miles away a few hours ago, and I begged her to get some wine before she came home, thinking it would be easier to get through this with some fortification. She came back with 12 bottles. Good woman.
I remember pulling my small daughter on a sled,a block and 1/2 to buy milk (let me tell you,the wind off Lake Michigan made it almost impossible to walk and even a mink didn't stop the bone numbing cold!),since the milk man (yes,we got milk delivered back then,and eggs too)couldn't get through. Even the private schools (she went to Latin)closed;which was unheard of.
I lived on the South Side and had to go to work at U.S. Steel. Took the bus and it took me hours to get to work when normally it was a thirty minute ride. We stayed at the mill for 24 hours working. One guy was there for 40 hours straight.
Late to the party, but I had to comment. I lived in Chicago in '79 on the Near North Side and was a six year old student at the Latin School at that time. We still have pictures of the snow piled five feet high in our yard! You can imagine the scope of such an event for a six year old. Unbelievable.
That's one of the reasons I have loved the blizzards in NYC - they bring back those early childhood memories (I left Chicago at 13). This one is doing the trick. :)