The Blizzard of January 1978 · the city shovelled itself out

25–27 JANUARY 1978

The storm closed the city for days and stands in the official record as the peak of the hardest winter ever measured here: The winter of 1977–78 was, in the National Weather Service's settled figures, the coldest and snowiest on record at South Bend since records began in 1893 — an average winter temperature of 19.7 degrees and 136.3 inches of snow across December, January and February, preceded by the snowiest autumn on record. January was the worst of it: 86.1 inches of snow in the month. The blizzard itself arrived on the night of 25 January as two storm systems merged; through the 26th, snow fell at one to two inches an hour in sustained winds of 35 to 45 miles an hour, with visibility at or below a sixteenth of a mile, and South Bend recorded the lowest barometric pressure in its history — 28.82 inches — as the storm's centre passed. The University of Notre Dame's own history says 41 inches of snow fell at the university over the storm's three days, with drifts reported to twenty feet; a regional retrospective put South Bend's storm total at as much as 36 inches. The figures are printed as their sources state them: the Weather Service's own settled numbers for the city are the month's 86.1 inches and a snow depth that reached 41 inches on the ground by 30 January.

The city's experience of it was paralysis, then improvisation: Roads were impassable and emergency vehicles stranded; Notre Dame cancelled classes for three days, a thing its history calls unprecedented. On the Sunday and Monday after the storm, some 200 volunteers from Notre Dame and Saint Mary's shovelled snow for South Bend's elderly and handicapped residents, some of whom could not open their doors against drifts of six to eight feet. In the River Park neighborhood, in a resident's account kept by the Weather Service, the city told a caller asking when a plow would come, "not any time soon" — so the neighbors shovelled their own street clear, dug out the cars, and walked with sleds to Benner's market at 30th and Mishawaka Avenue for whoever needed groceries, with Army Reserve carriers moving on Mishawaka Avenue among the buried cars. The blizzard killed no one in this record, and it is not printed as a catastrophe of casualties; it is printed as the week the city's systems stopped and its neighborhoods ran themselves — the benchmark storm against which every later winter here is still measured.

Sources:

1. National Weather Service, Northern Indiana (IWX), "Northern Indiana Blizzard of 1978" — the winter of 1977–78 as the coldest and snowiest on record at South Bend (since 1893): winter average temperature 19.7°, winter snowfall 136.3 inches, the snowiest autumn on record (30.6 inches), January snowfall of 86.1 inches, snow depth of 41 inches on 30 January, and the all-time minimum pressure of 28.82 inches (976 mb) on 26 January; snowfall rates of one to two inches an hour and sustained winds of 35 to 45 mph at the storm's height; the eyewitness accounts page, including the River Park account of the neighbours' street, the sled trips to Benner's market, and the Army Reserve carriers on Mishawaka Avenue.
2. University of Notre Dame Archives — the university's history of the storm: 41 inches of snow over the three days at Notre Dame, drifts reported to twenty feet, roads impassable and emergency vehicles stranded, classes cancelled for three days, and the 200 volunteers from Notre Dame and Saint Mary's shovelling for the city's elderly and handicapped residents on Sunday and Monday.
3. Presque Isle County Advance (2018), regional blizzard retrospective — South Bend receiving as much as 36 inches from the entire event, printed as the retrospective's figure against the university's three-day 41.