United States

The Great Blizzard of January 1978

January 26, 2012; 1:54 PM

The present writer was in his senior year of Dayton, Ohio, area high school in January 1978, a month of unusually high, even record, snowfall in the Ohio Valley to the central Appalachians.

By the 25th of the month, snow depth had already smashed the standing record high at the Dayton airport, having reached 2 feet following a series of three major winter storms.

But the big wallop was yet to come.

The day of the 25th brought a thaw, with temperatures well into the 30s and drizzle building into a steady, soaking rain.

That evening, the rain poured down, causing the snow to settle and droop. It seemed a sad end for a budding meteorologists "dream winter."

Even then, heavy snow lurked tantalizingly near to the west, barely beyond the Indiana line. Then, as midnight drew near, a wind shift to the northwest brought raindrops, and then pings of sleet, to my west-facing window.

Soon, a near silence meant that snow had started at last. Only moderate at first, it quickly became heavy as winds began to roar. Within minutes, it was all-but a whiteout, falling snow and blowing snow melding into a fast-moving cloud.

On and on it went, through the night and through the following day. At times, the house would seem to groan from the blasts of wind, no doubt gusting above 60 mph a few times.

Drifts of snow blown off a field to the west crept steadily onto our road from the gap between houses on the opposite side.

The storm that was the Blizzard of 1978 sat and spun near the Great Lakes for another few days. The wind and drifting slowly faded after the 26th.

Life for many area residents was thoroughly disrupted for at least a few days, schools and some business being shut for multiple days.

It also took days to open all lanes on area roads, some of which had thick ice accumulation caused by melted water from the pre-blizzard rain still flowing onto the pavement.

The storm set a single-storm snowfall record in Dayton (about 1 foot), but it was nowhere near the worst of what happened during this amazing, though deadly and costly, storm.

I may never see the likes of it again.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com