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For one week in January 1978 the snowmobile was not a recreation in this county; it was the ambulance, the grocery run, and the newspaper's delivery fleet — and the record of that week is a regional record, with Walkerton's own page still to be pulled. The storm, on federal record: the Great Blizzard of 25–27 January 1978, record low pressure on the 26th, snow at one to two inches an hour in 35–45 mph winds; South Bend's winter of 1977–78 remains its coldest and snowiest on record — 136.3 inches of snow for the season, 86.1 inches in January alone (National Weather Service, Northern Indiana). The county's press picture, at the strength reached: Notre Dame's Observer of 31 January 1978, reporting the South Bend Tribune's account, records 41 inches fallen in January at South Bend and a city beginning to move only by "ambulances, four-wheel drive vehicles or snowmobiles." The lived version survives in the Weather Service's eyewitness file one county south, in Starke County: "People walked, pulling sleds, riding horses, snowmobiles, just to get groceries." Walkerton sat in the same storm band, on the same drifted highways (US 6 and State Road 23 both cross it), and a Walkerton-specific snowmobile story — a rescue, a supply run, a named rider — is exactly what the town paper's blizzard issues would carry; those issues were not reached in this section, and no Walkerton moment is invented here to fill the frame. Closure: NAMED GAP — the blizzard's snowmobile week is dug at regional and county-adjacent press strength; the Walkerton-specific moment's settlers are named: the Walkerton Independent's January–February 1978 run in Hoosier State Chronicles and the South Bend Tribune's blizzard coverage of the county's southwest.
Sources: National Weather Service, Northern Indiana, "Northern Indiana Blizzard of 1978" (South Bend season 136.3 in; January 86.1 in; Starke County eyewitness account); The Observer (Notre Dame), 31 Jan 1978 (the Tribune's report: 41 inches; travel by ambulance, four-wheel drive, or snowmobile).