chuck
Guest
Sep 25, 2006
7:10 AM
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In what year was there a blizzard at dayton,ohio 1973 or 1977
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ftmc
Guest
Oct 21, 2006
9:32 PM
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According to Wikipedia, it was January 26, 1978. I still
have a t-shirt that says "I Survived the Blizzard of '78".
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JeffN
5 posts
Apr 06, 2007
2:11 PM
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Things were pretty rough in '77 and '78 ... but early 1978 was THE blizzard. We were out of school for a week.
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Mike C
3 posts
May 07, 2007
7:45 PM
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Blizzard was 1978. Winds and blowing snow was horrible. City looked like a ghost town. The stoplights were sideways when I went to work that day.
Last Edited by on May 07, 2007 7:46 PM
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driver62
25 posts
May 08, 2007
7:39 AM
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I didn't have to work that day as my company shut down. I did go to Stumps market on Salem for bread and milk and got stuck in the parking lot. Two guys pushed me out so I could get home.
It was a nasty storm.
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rodat6
6 posts
Mar 13, 2008
8:02 PM
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I lived in Dayton from birth in the summer of 1942 until I was 17 in 1959 at which time I moved to Dallas Texas.
I remember a blizzard around 1950, no school for several weeks, military passing out either c or k rations, I remember eating some of them. Some fathers were stuck at work for I forget how long. In Parkside where I lived with my elder brother and two elder sisters, mother and father, I remember the drifts being as high as the buildings we lived in.
It was really great, I was about 8, we played and had a great time, making snow forts, having snow ball fights, tunneling under the snow making snow caves, no school, yeah. Snow is beautiful to a kid who does not have a job to go to and slave, lol.
I remember blue ears, toes and fingers too, most of our clothing was military surplus. Lots of good changes from the shoes of today to the shoes of the Forties and Fifties.
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JackZ
11 posts
Mar 24, 2008
10:57 AM
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Who could forget the Blizzard of '78!
I was living with my parents in Dayton still and my bedroom
faced the SW. Blown snow made its way along the floor and the bottom of my bedroom window/wall.
Our house was freezing cold that day!
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Mikey
32 posts
Jul 29, 2009
1:28 PM
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1978 was a terrible winter in Dayton. The January blizzard put down snow that didn't melt from shaded areas until May. I worked in bldg. 620, Area B at WPAFB. The truck docks were in a courtyard that received very little sun. We cooled our soft drinks and lunches in a snow drift that didn't melt until early May.
BUT: 1950 was the "mother of them all..." Fortunately, my father was at home the night of the real snowfall, so we had him at home with us on Leland Ave. He and all of the able-bodied men on the block shoveled a walking path in the street for emergency access. the undrifted snow was at the bottom of the windows, about seven feet off the ground. The doors were blocked so we had to bail out through the windows for a while. Westwood School was closed for at least a week. So soon after WWII, there was little actual snow removal equipment. The streets were finally cleared by road graders.
Fortunately, the Earl Unger family lived next to their store (Rosie's Corner) at Hoover and Burleigh. We could get deli-type food there. Interesting, I don't remember the power ever being off.
The funniest thing that I remember was all of the people stuck at the TV stations, beards getting longer and clothes more rumpled. WLW-D showed the same old western over and over-end to end!
This all happened on the weekend of the Ohio State - Michigan Game. The game was played as scheduled and was on TV, but all that was visible was snow and vague shadows moving around. It amounted to a radio broadcast! Field conditions in Columbus were so bad that there were a record-breaking 45 punts during the game.
Our house was new (1947) but it was built with a convection coal furnace, so we were able to stay warm.
This storm is still used as primary data for weather modeling and predicting software.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Appalachian_Storm_of_November_1950
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Mikey, Gatlinburg, TN
Last Edited by on Jul 29, 2009 1:58 PM
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rodat6
58 posts
Jul 29, 2009
5:39 PM
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Thank you Mikey for filling in the dates, I remember the storm. I was 8, it was great, no school, military passing out C or K Rations, dad stuck at the Workhouse where he worked as a guard. He took me to work once and showed me the bullpen where the guards had their desks, it was a barred circle about 20 foot across, prisoners all around, guards in the middle.
The storm was fun to a kid, we lived in Parkside, father was returning Marine from California where he was being trained for the Pacific invasion.
I loved to burrow under the snow, the drifts were nearly to the top of a Parkside two story, it was great from my perspective. It wasn't until I was around 15 or 16 when I found out what black snow was then it stopped being fun.
Standing under a street light at night in the driving snow, looking up, it was beautiful, I loved it. I remember frostbite too , never put frozen flesh under hot water, use cold. The dress we had then as compared to now, WWII military surplus. lol. Thanks for the link, thanks for the dates.
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Sweetpea46
12 posts
Jul 29, 2009
7:26 PM
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Thanks for all stories about the "blizzard" of 78. It brought back a lot of memories. But I was a parent of small children at the time and it was scary! We lived out of town in a 150 year old farm house, very cold. We had firewood and plenty of food for about 4 days. Then we had to venture out but it was still bad even then. Roads were only partially passable and 15 foot drifts across some roads. Scary stuff!
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Marck1957
54 posts
Jul 30, 2009
9:25 AM
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Our driveway sloped gently down hill, and my car (a Gremlin) was parked at the bottom of it, against the garage. The snow drifted all around it, around 3-4 feet high, and essentially froze it into place. I couldn't get it out for the longest time, but dad had a '74 Monte Carlo with a 454 engine in it, so I had little motivation to dig the Gremlin out. His car was alot more fun drive! I don't remember how long my car was frozen there, but it was weeks.
Mom and dad woke us up in the middle of the night to get up and see the storm. It didn't look like any snow was actually coming down, it was all blowing parallel to the ground! It was really something to see. Amazing. The Gremlin's side window was opened a teeny bit, and the dashboard had a minature snowdrift across it! I recall the buses stopped running after the storm, for the first time ever, I think. The sidestreets all had a single set of tiretracks that had to be shared by folks going up and down them. The city trucked snow out of downtown and dumped it behind Triangle Park in huge piles. The remnants of it didn't finish melting for months, well into springtime. The blizzard was an amazing thing, for sure. I wish that I could have seen the blizzard of 1950. As Mikey says, it was the mother of all storms.
Last Edited by on Jul 30, 2009 9:28 AM
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Mikey
33 posts
Jul 31, 2009
10:28 PM
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The 1978 blizzard started out as a violent thunderstorm (in January!) The thunder woke me up about midnight. I thought -how wierd- and dozed off. By three AM, there was a two inch layer of ice on everything - then came the snow and wind. The road departments used front loaders with forks to score the ice for salt to work. In some places, like Centerville, the scars remained on the roads for five years, until repaving.
SweetPea, you didn't have to live in a 150 year old house to be cold. In 1978, the power companies still had generating stations in town. They couldn't get coal deliveries, so power was rationed by locality via rolling blackouts. The local stations are all gone. Now they are located right on the Ohio River, where coal is delivered by barges directly from mines in Kentucky.
The cities also dumped snow into the rivers and even hauled some out of town in empty railroad coal cars - really!
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Mikey, Gatlinburg, TN
Last Edited by on Aug 01, 2009 8:53 AM
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Sweetpea46
13 posts
Aug 01, 2009
3:00 AM
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Yes, Mikey, it was a very warm day, around 60 and a lot of rain. Down Lawrence Ave. in Miamisburg looked like ripples for days after where the water had frozen as it ran downhill.
I was 4 in 1950 and I remember a lot of snow and a lot of talk about it in later years but I don't remember the depth of the storm itself.
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Sweetpea46
14 posts
Aug 02, 2009
6:49 AM
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Thank you Mikey! This will be interesting.
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ROYBOY
1 post
Aug 08, 2009
9:38 AM
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I worked at GHR foundery on second shift that night I went to work it was raining.At about 12:00 PM it started snowing and by the time I got off it was about 22 degrese below zero and about a foot of snow.My truck was froze from the rain,but it started nobody could get there cars started so about six guys jumped in my truck to get warm.After a while I tride to go but it wouldn't move after a while it broke loose and we went up webster st to Darbys Den.I left my truck in the middle of the street.I was stuck in dayton for two days.
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RickD
28 posts
Aug 11, 2009
12:15 PM
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I moved to Denver at the end of March of '78 and stuck my garage-sale sign in a snow bank still left from the Jan storm. Finally move South after my house was covered in snow in Denver. I remember hearing the weather report that the barometric pressure was 28 something. The wind blew all of the snow from part of my driveway and piled it into my front yard. My car and street were covered in snow for days. I managed to dig a path down my sidewalk and the sides were as tall as me.
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Steve K
146 posts
Oct 08, 2009
9:41 AM
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During the 78 blizzard I was working at the Red Cross downtown, we were handling emergency prescription deliveries. Somebody called in for birth control pills because she and her boyfriend were snowed in and didn't have anything else to do. Not sure what the nurse said to her, she made us leave the room .
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pie8me
66 posts
Oct 08, 2009
10:58 AM
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Birth control pills (snicker), that was good.
I lived on Huffman at the time, close to Findly. Between the drifting and the snow plows my '69 V-dubbaya was all but completely buried. In the days after, parking on the street got really ugly. Imagine spending half a day digging out a spot just to have someone take it the minute you left. Folks were close to getting Medieval on each other. I know more than one car had the air let out of the tires because of it.
Last Edited by on Oct 08, 2009 11:00 AM
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pie8me
67 posts
Oct 08, 2009
11:15 AM
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Blizzards in 1918, 1950 and 1978. That's a 25 to 30 year cycle. We're overdue...
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gris66
8 posts
Oct 10, 2009
1:37 PM
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I agree but it looks more like 28 to 32 years. 2010 is year 32. I'd say it's time to get your can goods, snow shovels and birth control pills.
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Rocket88man
16 posts
Feb 25, 2014
5:08 PM
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Remember the '50 blizzard. Walked to the store for food, brought it home on the sled. My cousins were visiting from Warren, Ohio and ended up staying nearly a week until the roads were clear to drive. Have a lot of slides of that storm if I can get them back from my ex-wife one of these days!!
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luv my dayton
551 posts
Feb 28, 2014
6:06 AM
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Would be nice if your ex would let you have some of the pics so you could scan them and have curt put them on this website. I was 7 in 1950 and don't remember that storm but the one in seventies I do.
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KidPast50
15 posts
Mar 06, 2014
8:20 AM
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In 78 I was on my way back from Florida taking my usual route on I75. While in Tennessee a very thin sheet of ice formed on the interstate. I remember making it to the top of a pretty steep grate and stopping at a little motel overnight, because I was worried about the icy conditions. Next morning I left the motel and proceeded on my way to Dayton. By now the entire interstate was coated by black ice. The whole way back I just remember trucks jackknifing off the road left and right! They were going at a top speed anywhere between 10 and 15 miles an hour. I was sure that any minute I would be next! I was driving a volkswagon bus with NO heater in it but I did have an old kerosene heater that provided heat but unfortunately it also smoked up the whole vehicle! I remember stopping every so often to get out and stomp my feet. It was so cold that was the only way to get feeling back into them! It seemed like it took me at least twenty hours to get back to Beavercreek Ohio although it was 300 miles at the most. I was sure glad o make it back without incident! As I read the next morning in the newspaper, many motorists along that highway had become stranded, I'm not sure if there were any fatalities, but I sure felt lucky!
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