Over the weekend, meteorologist Ryan Hall predicted heavy snow and high winds for the Great Lakes. I thought to myself if it doesn’t equal the Great Blizzard of 1978, it’s not such a big deal. I took into consideration that modern meteorologists can predict weather down to the hour, it seems, but predictions don’t lessen the power and impact of storms – it’s just that we are better prepared these days. Better preparation means warnings to stay off the roads (often unheeded). It also means salt trucks are ready, more emergency personnel may be scheduled, and hospitals can call in more staff. I didn’t fear this storm. I didn’t believe for a minute it would compare to the event that nearly crippled the Great Lakes Region in 1978.
My memory takes me to other blizzards, like the one when I
was nine or ten. My family and I were coming back from Virginia. We were almost
to the Michigan border when Ohio State Troopers blocked the highway and told us to get off Interstate
75. Traffic was diverted to the closest ramp. We followed a line of cars into Toledo. My mom, dad and I sat in a McDonalds
that generously stayed open long past closing. The manager and staff started cooking
more food and giving it away for free. The manager brought out board games,
some of which were McDonalds themed. More people trickled in, seeing that the
lights were still on. My dad went on a walk. He came back and quietly hustled
my mother and I out of the little burger place and put us in our station wagon.
My mother said she’d heard the interstate was still closed, after all, people
were still gathering. My dad proudly proclaimed that he’d found the last vacant
room at a truck stop. We went down a block, pulled in, went inside and then my
dad got donuts and milk and a few other supplies from a gas station. My mother
worried that the milk would spoil, but my dad assured her that it would keep
just fine hidden in the bushes under the window. In fact, we had to thaw it for
a couple mornings until the roads were opened up again.
Then there was a great snowstorm in1982. The drifts were so high
that there was maybe four inches of fence in spots. Our collies went right up
to it but never went over the exposed chain-link. It was so cold that an arctic
owl flew down to our neighborhood, looking and sounding like a ghost in the
trees.
Those were major blizzards, but the greatest of all, in my opinion,
was the storm that paralyzed the Great Lakes in late January of 1978. I
was thirteen. The flakes started, no different than most snowstorms.
We’d recently got our first color television. It had a twenty-inch
screen, laughable by today’s standards. This was a second-hand purchase from
family friends who had recently upgraded.
I had just gotten home from school and turned on channel 50, which was full of after-school shows geared towards family and children. Soon, my mother switched channels to watch the local news. Weatherman Sonny Eliot was saying something about sneezy weather, since it was going to be snowing and breezy.
The doorbell rang and my mother answered it. I looked out onto Allen Road in Taylor, Michigan thinking how pretty the flakes were; traffic was slow on our usually busy road, a major north-south five lane street if you counted the turn lane. I could hear the swish, swish of tires on wet pavement. I didn’t pay attention to whomever was at the door. I figured if it was a neighbor, they’d have been ushered inside. I saw beautiful big flakes and the evergreen bushes by our porch covered in white, their little red berries exposed. It was a month past Christmas, but it looked like a Holiday scene. A most beautiful feeling came over me. There was no foreboding whatsoever. My mother closed the front door. I turned back to the electric magic that danced in rainbow colors across our “new” TV.
The next day, I awoke to silence. Not one vehicle passed.
The nearby Detroit Metro Airport was also silent. There were no locomotive
sounds from the tracks just west of our home; not one. School was cancelled. My father did not
go to work. Our long driveway had chest-deep drifts.
My dad went out to the barn. I watched from the back porch door. He had to
dig out a set of barn doors to feed my horse. Sunshine took a step, arching a front
leg forward, then another. She got both her hind legs past the dug out part and
into the cold, white fluff and stood there belly deep for a moment. She promptly turned
around and refused to go back outside for a few days.
Our power went out. I don’t even remember getting one phone
call during those couple days. I played a little tune here and there on our
piano. During daylight we put a puzzle together and played some games. My
mother had some cold cuts and fruit, but there was no real way to cook. We only
had an electric range. At some point, my dad walked to a corner gas station for
a gallon of milk. I assume the stranded employee just sheltered in place. In the evenings we used candles for light.
For days there were no ambulances, motorcycles, cars, trucks,
planes, trains nor laughter of neighbors. The dogs, sheltering in the big red
barn with the other animals, didn’t even bark. Our usually busy neighborhood was
enveloped in an eerie, ominous stillness. Somehow, I do remember streetlights
though. I sat upstairs looking out the
window one night. I gazed southward on Allen, drifting flakes swirling under
the beams.
In the distance came a roaring sound, motorized, but unlike
a car engine. The low-toned buzz crept closer, still unfamiliar. A queer trepidation
shook me from deep inside. Before long, I saw headlights and riders, but
realized these were not motorcycles. Down the middle of our street coursed two
snowmobiles which under normal circumstances would have found no actual snow on
our street to function and even if they had, a car or truck would have collided
with them. They made their way past our home and I ran to the north-facing
window. I watched them travel toward Eureka. Once past all our trees, I could
only hear them. Then silence returned. Perhaps twenty minutes later I heard the roaring engines again,
but this time the riders in their snowsuits clutched bags or boxes of milk,
beer, or food, on their way south.
One morning, my horse was out stretching her legs, watching our
collies and the neighbor dogs snarling and running up and down the
fenceline. At some point our street was plowed and the din of traffic returned.
The woosh of airplanes flying overhead left vaporized streaks in a new blue
sky. Freight trains once again chugged on the trestle over Eureka Road. The
next week, I went back to school and my dad was back to work.
Here I sit, thinking about that storm and its overwhelming SILENCE! Our everyday commerce came to a standstill for a little less than a week. The snow, as high as a horse’s belly, the drifts up past her shoulders. For me there was no other way to measure.
For several days, we've had heavy snow and fierce wind gusts. and I've heard we'll have this weather until at least Tuesday, with high drifts, possible. It's unlikely to rival that blizzard of 1978, but our gates are already blocked. We must be vigilant in taking water out to our animals -- it freezes so fast!
Monday afternoon an actual warning blared on my phone: A one hundred plus vehicle pile-up in Ottawa County, where I now live, was in progress. Then just north of my home another couple multi-vehicular crashes took place. Whether this January blizzard will be as significant as the one from forty-eight years ago, I do not know – but it does bring back memories.
What do you remember about the January 1978 blizzard that
brought the Great Lakes region to its knees?
#Snow #Blizzard #Blizzardof1978 #collies #TaylorMichigan #Downriver #Toledo #ToledoOhio #Mcdonalds #Interstae75 #RyanHallYall #SonnyEliot #Horses #Barns #Detroit #OttawaCounty #AllenRoad #EurekaRoad
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