worst winter stom

Not to steal the thread below but I got to thinking and wandering what is the worst winter storm anyone can remember? Back in the late 70 and early eighties we made "dikes" here when we plowed the roads. As soon as we plowed the first time the blowing snow would hit the plowed bank and fall into the road. There was a time we had 10 foot banks along the road on the flat land and no snow at all in the fields.
Several places we graded the snow in the fields and used the field for the road. I am in south central Il. January of 1977 was the meanest blizzard I was ever in. The wind blew from every direction for three days and the 18 inches of snow we had on the ground changed locations many times during that storm. At one point the wind was so strong from the east you could lean backwards into it and not fall.
Township had a cat 112 grader that has the fuel tank in the cab under the seat. Once the grader was warm the fuel never jelled as long as the side shields were on and it and grader was working. When it was parked idling we had to wrap the filters to keep them warm. That grader ran the whole month of January except to change oil in it. Thankfully we had CB radios and people listened to us and knew where we were working if we needed help. For some of the houses the never had a base unit all they had to do was listen to there TV as we would bleed over on some of the TVs, good old days.
What fun it was doing the chores. Fuel oil heaters in the cattle tanks and some in the hog drinkers that the wind would blow out. Some folks mixed a little gasoline in the diesel to make them light easier, too much gasoline and it would blow up in your face.

My memory's slipping,was it 77 or 78 that we had three feet in January here in Michigan? Thinking 78 because I had a new 77 Chevy 4x4 and I bought it late in the year. Huge drifts,extreme cold temps. The milk man was snowed in at a farm over west for three days so the rest of us were dumping milk. My uncle and cousin were in the excavating business at the time and were running around the clock clearing driveways and parking lots. The usual trucks and tractors just couldn't do it. The BTO out east of town had a Case 1470 with a blade. His sons were running the tires off that thing moving snow around town too.

im 67 and this was nothing live in central WI.in the 70s we had some real winters

I would say the worst storm I've witnessed was in the winter of 77/78. At that time I lived in a 10x50 Roycraft mobile home @ 20 years old by myself. The furnace never stopped running. Frost on the inside of the trailer walls. It was -28? air temp at the peak of the storm. I had a 76 F150 4x4 in the driveway with one of those fiberglass Ford Caps, you could see the roof of the cab & cap the next morning. I could climb on the roof of Mobile home without a ladder. My 1949 John Deere B sat outside all I could see was the bucket over the exhaust. The B also had a snow plow on it. My road was plowed with a Bull Dozer 2 days later & the telephone wires were buried in the snow. The State brought in Blowers to clear the highway, 2 days later everything was drifted shut. Nice part with having snow that deep around the trailer the water never froze! 1963 wasn't very nice either.

Must have been 81 or 82 we had more than once where we had more than a week that it never got above zero. And between each we had a big snow storm. I was married and had my own place, but dad had some medical issue and I had to go to his place and milk cows. Got so bad I was driving his 970 tractor the 10 miles back and forth to do chores at both places. One morning after a new snow the ditches and everything were level full and a couple times I ran off the road because I couldn't see where the road ended. Luckily I had a shovel with to shovel out under the tractor and get it moving, then had to go out into the field and find a driveway back onto the road. Now I think back to how dangerous that was, but then it was no big deal. Drove my 930 once, but with just gravity feed fuel system it kept gelling up.

This is the one the old folks talked about all their lives. Dad said they could walk over the telephone lines over west of here.

We also had the Halloween snow storm in 91. Seems silly now, but we took the kids trick or treating that night. Lol. There were lots of kids out in that. What a crazy thing to do.
Blizzard

In the 70?s they said we were gonna have an ice age coming.now it?s global warming oh I mean climate change,wish they would make up their minds!

77/78..we had a HD21 dozer, yea, we could move snow.

I was on my first tour of Germany in the mid 70's. And seeing as we moved because of the military I had the "pleasure" of experiencing winters in different places. The worst as a kid was 2 that stick in my mind. One I was 7 or 8 and we had a 6' drift down the driveway. The 2nd one gave the same results but I remember it better. Once we moved to MN? Nothing comes to mind. Mid 70's that everyone is talking about? I was in Germany. First time I ever saw/heard thunder and lightning during a heavy snow. The ice storms in KS were something to see. 1-2-3 inches of ice! WOW! I remember being on US 77 doing 30 and the car just slowly spinning end for end. Was in the north bound lane doing 30, one and half rotations later was in the south bound lane pointing south doing 0. Saw what 3" of snow would to the Ft Know KY area. What a mess! Then 11 month after I moved back to MN we had the blizzard of 97. 36" in 24 hours in our area. That was over shadowed just a short time later by the "overland flooding" in the Fargo and Grand Forks area. Fargo is 90 miles.

It is what it is.

Rick

My Cousins Grandfather was 97 in the 70s , and told me , the most snow He saw was in the winter of 1917/1918 snow up to the head light of a steam engine !! sitting in his town , now that's a lot !!

Here in mid Mn. it had to be the Armistday blizzard of the early 40's. A lot of lives lost.

It actually stayed below freezing for a solid week down here in south La. back in 81 or 83 can?t remember which.no snow just ice.coldest I remember it getting down to 4 degrees

1978 in northern Ohio. More than 80 people died. There was 60 inches of snow on the flats and it filled hard wood forests to the top branches. My country house was burried to the ridge of the roof for 100 feet on all sides. We tunneled out 3 times to keep air passage to allow us to use a kerosun catylitic heater. On the 8th day we managed to get to the neighbors house on a snowmobile They had an RV generator running the furnace. Nasty. Jim
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Blizzard of '66 in the Genesee valley of Western New York. Nobody went anywhere for a week.

Blizzard of '66 in the Genesee valley of Western New York. Nobody went anywhere for a week.

Winter of 78, 79. Snow was deep, unbearable cold, my dead end township road got cleared a week later with a dozer. Driving down route 20 was like going through a tunnel, only scenery was straight ahead.

78 saw us get six straight days off school- cold temps and blizzard winds. Our cul-de-sac had drifts about four feet deep, but a hundred feet wide- no where to push it with a plow, needed to be dug out and piled. Once dug, it drifted right back in.

This winter is colder, less snow. I spend far more time clearing snow and planning for future snows than Grandpa ever did when he lived here. He did it on a JD 1010 with no cab, I use a warm, dry pickup and plow.

I live in the same area as i grew up in. The winter if 67 and 79 were two of the worst round here and we had one 83 that had a lot of snow but the cold was worse. Below 0 for 5 or 6 days and that is a long time for this area.

March ?93, 50 some inches. Milk truck backed in the narrow path I had cleared out at 6:30 PM. He was chained up. I was first stop on his 2nd load and was plenty happy to see him because because I filled both tanks every other day. Then we were blessed with 25-30 below zero temps until a couple days before April. Snow drifts lasted until late May.

15 March 1965 central Minnesota we received over two feet of snow with 50 mph winds, We already had a large amount of snow on the ground before the storm come. It snowed and blew for three days before it died down. My Dad was a dairy farmer so we still had to take care of the cows and young stock. We ended up dumping milk with every thing we had filled.
All the roads were impassible. Our local township had a cat road grader with a v plow on it. The grader could only make it about a foot at a time backing up and ramming into the drifts. We could stand on the drifts and look down at the grader. The telephone wires were only about a foot above the drifts. A day later the township came with their D7 cat and pushed the channels open.
We had another bad blizzard in Jan 1975 but it was nothing like 1965. Have not had another one since but we have had a lot of snow.
Brian

My mother used to talk about the Armistice day blizzard!

Hands down, the winter of 1948-49 here in Nebraska. There were even trains snowed in until the spring thaw.

Hay was delivered to livestock by airplane, and I heard one rancher was killed when he was hit by a bale of hay thrown out of an airplane.

Sometime in 66, we knew it was coming, dad brought the dozer home from the woods, we had a pretty new JD 350 crawler. He opened up our yard and then drove it down the state highway a mile and did the neighbors. I shoveled off the roof of the house, and then stepped off onto the snowbank. I dug lots of snow tunnels that winter!

jonf,

sister and i took our kids trick or treating Halloween of 1991 too... it was warm when we started out, then began to rain. soon the rain started freezing - turned out to me the mother of all ice storms down here.

i barely made home with our little girl - power lines went down... we had no power for 3 days. major damage to trees. had to camp out in my in-laws living room... as they had a wood stove for emergencies.

my sister's family went and camped out with my parents, as dad's woodworking shop had a wood stove in it.

was not fun at the time... but kind of a neat memory all these years later.

The winter of 1977/1978 was the worst I can remember. Very cold and lots of snow.

Thanksgiving in Cleveland, OH. You have to be old to remember that.

In my years on this rock i have seen a lot of tough winters , only missed two while i was in the service . Winter of 63 was bad and my first to battle . I worked at a large construction co. back then and i was the only employee that lived close to the shop . It was my first year when i would go to school till lunch time then go to work in the afternoon , it started snowing around third period and it was coming down hard and when i got out at lunch time there was already 6-8 inches on the ground . I drove home to change and grab a bite to eat and told my mom that i was going to leave the car home and just walk the mile and a half . When i got to work my boss told me to get the Ford tractor and start cleaning the parking lot , It had a loader and a rear blade and the battle began by the time i made it to the hyway what i had just cleared was already covered and by the time i made it back to the door on the big shop the lot out to the road was covered once again . MY boss came out and told me i was fighting a loosen battle and to put the ford back into the carpenter shop and then give him a hand and get the one D 6 going and the big Gallion grader going and we would put them inside for the night JUST INCASE . Once everything was inside andJhon and i were the last two there he said i don't think your going to have school in the morning and i laughed and said we always have school . He said i'll run ya home and we closed up but left the heat on and set at 70 something we never did as we always turned the heat down to 50 at night . then John said why don't you take your truck home tonight as earlier that year the owner bought me my own company truck and i said nah it's fine just where it is tucked back in the carpenter shop , so he ran me home in his Jeep pick up . still snowing like all get out . had supper late due to dad getting home late due to the weather and after supper my one friend and walked to the bowling alley , we weren't wossys back then . Lived on a main US hyway and the old semi's were all sporting chains and some having trouble making the hill out on the east side of town . Jack and i bowled three games and we headed home and on the way home i saw my first lighting and thunder in a snow storm . Got home took a shower and went to bed . At 1:30 A M i heard the phone ring and my dad getting up cussen while he walked to the phone in the dinning room then my bedroom door opens and he said get up it's for you it's your boss . I answer the phone and John say you don't have school in the morning and COME and get me i am stuck in my drive , WHAT you have the Jeep with four wheel drive and your stuck , Yep i am stuck and we have been called out by the state to open roads , Get the D 6 and come and get me . John lived about seven miles from the shop . So i got dressed and went to fgind my car , well it was buried and i ended up usen and old set of ski's and poled my way to the shop . i had to find the shovel that we kept outside the walkin door to dig down to get my key in the lock to open. got the lights on and left the walkin door open while i started the 6 and let it warm up along with the exhaust fan running . It was still snowing hard and i thought ya know i really don't want to set on this dozer with out the heat houser so i got the heat houser out of the parts room and tied it on made sure the lights were all working and opend the big door and pushed my way out of the shop and did a little lot clearing closed the doors but did not lock them angled the blade to the right and headed east down the hyway wiggling my way around stuck semi's and the few cars stuck along with a couple state trucks . got over to John's house and sure enough he was stuck , high centered in his drive . Gave him a quick tug and we were off back to the shop as fast as i could make the 6 go , sometimes i could run in forth sometimes down into second , stopped long enough to give the two state trucks a tug , by the time we made it back to the shop it was starting to get light and a couple other guys had made it in and we started getting other dozers and graders up and running . we even got my dozer up and running and i was the lucky one i had the cab with heat and the guy from the state came down and started giving us our routes to open I had from the shop west to the county line then two north south roads to the county line and then one east west road to the south and the one state U S hyway back to the shop . Ya can move lots of snow with a D9 G and one V W that was NOt found till spring .

Yea i was 4 and can vaguely remember that one .

I remember that one too. It was the worst I have ever seen. I was stranded for 3 days 1 1/2 miles from home.

here in southern Ontario, winter of 77 /78 was bad , roads closed and drifting etc we live about 3/4 mile from a main road, had to leave our car there and walk for over a week road only got cleared when wife needed to go to doctor and father in law came and blew out the road from the maim road to our house with an open station john deere
around the corner from me a beer truck got stranded and drifts were so high that snow machines were going over it
father in law said in the forties, they had a storm so bad, major county road running along lake erie was closed for 6 weeks
in laws lived on hiway 3 , runs from Windsor / Detroit to buffalo , they got cleared but said that whole winter, people that lived on the side roads south of them left their cars at their place and walked the fields to get their vehicle, went to town to get supplies, and walked home ( about 7/8'th of a mile between roads ) we ain't got it so bad here I blew the drive way out , got heat, food, internet, tv and beer what more could you ask for ( o'h yah, a 4 whell drive truck, so if I really gotta get something , ( or get low on beer ) I can get it

bob

Interesting read here , Thanks for posting , This winter is a cake walkand I am glad... not wanting to compete for Worst Storm . My Dad talked about winters of 49 and 66. I was 19 when 77 hit , the following year was just as mean ,1st time i Ever saw the Ohio freeze over at Louisville and CLOSE Barge traffic

For me, since born in 1986... I think here in East Central MN would be the Halloween Blizzard of 1991. Official totals neared 30 inches. Duluth area had much more in that storm.

Historically, probably the Armistice Day blizzard in 1940.. I know there was a big one in the 1970's as well.

This last spring, (our first weekend in our new house), we had an "unofficial" 22" -because I measured it with a tape measure- the first weekend... Then the weekend immediately following we got another 13". Pretty uncharacteristic for April. March is usually our snowiest month. Sure hope we get more snow this winter because we are REALLY low.

I guess on the upside we are looking at about a 70+ degree difference from today to Sunday. Last night the mercury hit -36 on my deck thermometer.. Wind chills probably closing in on -65 or so. Was cold enough while outside at work last night to feel the water in my eyes start to freeze if my eyelids were held open too long. Had a pipe burst on the inside of one of our buildings near a loading dock of the cafeteria. Flooded half of the cafeteria, warehouse, basement tunnel system, transformer rooms... The list goes on. Lucky we caught it when we did, but still a very big mess. We have a saying around here, though.... "'Bit chilly out there, ya know?"

They are saying 44 degrees and possible drizzle on Sunday.... Only in Minnesota.

Yup - western NY blizzard of '66!

Spent 4 days in a church community hall on US20 with a couple dozen other stranded motorists. After the major roads got dug out we had to walk the several miles home (our car was buried in snow - it wasn't located for nearly a week). Back home we found snow drifted level with our 2 story house roof.


It was crazy, but a lot of fun for us kids!

Heavy snow in 1977 sounds abought right. Totally buried my 1975 Dasher. My dad had to hire his buddy who had a small construction company. Brought his dozer to get us opened up. Here is a good video of the county " plowing " the road.
Plow

You are probably meaning March, 1966. There is a book written about the 66 blizzard called "The Relentless Blizzard of March, 1966, The One To Remember". It lasted 3 days. I have a copy of that book and I think it may still be available in book stores. I was in College then at North Dakota State U (Fargo) and working part time at a local TV station. I was 1 of 4 from the TV station crew that stayed on duty for 3 days straight.

Blizzard in January 1978. We had about 3' of blowing drifting snow. It took the county with a big loader over an hour to clear 200' in front of my place. Some other spots were almost clear. Had a drift up to the eaves on my house. My wife was director of nursing at our hospital. She was snowed in there with our oldest son who was sick with salmonella. Big problem was I was snowed in for three days with aa three year-old and a eight-year-old. They got pretty tired of beans and hot dogs. Took me an hour to dig 10' of the drive with a tractor and loader. The ret of the winter wasn't aa whole lot better.

Ron, I was going to college in Ellendale during that one and IT WAS BAD. There was NO beer left in Ellendale bars except kegs on Monday after the blizzard quit on Saturday,

Christmas Eve blizzard of 82 or 83 don't remember which, here in central Illinois. -30^ with a nice breeze out of the north at 30 mph. Never been so cold before or since. I love summertime.

It was in March of 1965...not 66. I was in Special Forces Training Group at Ft. Bragg, NC, when I got the letter from Mom, describing the storm. The folks had sold the home farm and their auction WAS to be on Mar 15 or 17. It took 3 days for HWY 55 to get plowed open. Twp roads, not for weeks.

So I missed that storm but was farming here when the Jan 10th storm hit in 1975. Three days of snow and wind, power out for 17 hours...had 28 cows to milk and got thru about half of them before my fingers wore out. Started with the most recently fresh ones. Had put 40 lb feeder pigs in the new Cargill hutches just days before. Had to shovel paths for them to get to feed and water.

I woke up one morning in the 80's to 46 inches of "partly cloudy" in NY's Adirondack Mtns. As far as the worst storm, Ice Storm of '98 ion the NY/Ontario/Quebec border, 15 days in January weather with no power. Fun.

January in '66, '78, and '96 were the biggest here with 4 feet in '96. New York state got the worst of it '66, had a whopping 103 inches snowfall somewhere.