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National Weather Service, Northern Indiana, the Blizzard of 1978; University of Notre Dame History, 60 Milestones
The benchmark storm of the region's record closed everything around the town — and left no Roseland-specific record at all. The winter of 1977–'78 was, in the Weather Service's words, "the coldest and snowiest winter on record (since 1893) at South Bend," with a winter average temperature of 19.7° and 136.3 inches of snow; "January was the worst month overall with an amazing month snowfall of 86.1" and observed snowdepth of 41" on January 30th," and on 26 January South Bend set its all-time recorded minimum pressure, 28.82 inches. The Governor declared a snow emergency for the entire state on the morning of the 26th, and by that afternoon the State Police considered all Indiana roads closed. Notre Dame's own history, a mile south of the town line, remembers "forty-one inches of snow… over the next three days, bringing January's total to 85 inches. Drifts of up to 20 feet were reported," and a campus "nearly cut off from the city." The two 41-inch figures are different measurements — a snow depth in the Weather Service's account, a three-day fall in the university's — and both print with their carriers, unmerged. For Roseland itself — its streets, its marshal, its plows — no carrier was reached: the town's blizzard is the county's blizzard, and the article prints at county strength with the town's share expressly unstated rather than borrowed.