The Winter Chronicle |
SPECIAL EDITION |
The 44nd anniversary of the Blizzard of 1978
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January 26, 2022 |
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www.weather.gov/cle
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It Hit! |
Inside...
$73 Million agricultural losses
State of emergency declared in Ohio
The Meteorology Behind the Storm
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A house in Wood County nearly buried. (Photograph by Stephen Chang)
Storm ravages Ohio Thomas W. Schmidlin and Jeanne Appelhans Schmidlin Writers
The worst winter storm in Ohio history struck before dawn on Thursday, 26 January 1978. The Blizzard of ’78 continued through Thursday and into Friday. Transportation, business, industry, and schools were closed statewide for two days, with the normal pace of society not returning to the state for five days.
Wednesday evening, 25 January 1978, was relatively quiet in Ohio. Rain and fog were widespread, some freezing rain was falling in the northwest, and temperatures were in the 30s and 40s. Wednesday evening’s weather map, however, presented an ominous combination of weather headed for Ohio. A strong winter storm was moving northward from the Gulf of Mexico trough Tennessee and Kentucky, bitterly cold air was moving along the Atlantic Coast. Computer models of the National Weather Service forecast a major winter storm over Ohio for Thursday.
The southern storm intensified as it tracked northward, entering Ohio near Portsmouth at midnight and exiting across Lake Erie from Cleveland at 4:00 A.M. Thursday. Records for low atmospheric pressure were already being set Wednesday evening in eastern Tennessee, and more records fell as the storm intensified through Ohio.
Atmospheric pressure of 28.28 inches at Cleveland was the lowest pressure ever recorded in Ohio. This was also the second lowest pressure not associated with a hurricane recorded this century in the forty-eight contiguous states (Blackburn 1978). Other low pressure records included Akron-Canton with 28.33 inches, Youngstown with 28.39 inches, Columbus with 28.46 inches, Toledo with 28.49 inches, and Cincinnati with 28.81 inches (Blackburn 1978). Old pressure records were exceeded by .3 inch or more at most cities. |
The rapidly intensifying storm pulled bitter cold air from the west across Ohio on winds of fifty to seventy miles an hour by Thursday morning. These conditions combined with heavy snow and blowing of deep snow already on the ground to cause full blizzard conditions all across Ohio. Blizzard conditions arrived first with the arctic cold front in Cincinnati at 1:00 A.M., reached Dayton an hour later, Columbus and Toledo at about 3:00 A.M., and extended northeast to Akron, Youngstown, and Cleveland by 7:00 A.M. on 26 January. The arrival of the cold front and blizzard were unmistakable. Temperatures fell thirty degrees in two hours, winds increased to more than 50 miles an hour, and blinding wind-blown snow filled the air. Wind gusts of more than 40 miles an hour continued through See Storm, Page A2
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Highest wind gusts recorded in Ohio
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