55 yrs ago today in the chicagoland area

[orleans]

the 1967 blizzard
23" of snow, 15 foot high snow drifts, 53 mph winds, over 50,000 cars & busses stranded (wgn news)

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. We don't get winter like we used to.....

Grew up in coastal So. Maine in the 60s....we got a shit-ton of snow, every year, back then. The Saco River, at the end of my street, was frozen, almost solid, You could almost walk across the river to Biddeford. When things started to warm up and ice flows calved,,,,,me and my buds would get out with long wooden poles and play "bumb yeah" in the river. No one died, but a few got dunked and had to exit the game. Today, winter on the Saco is nothing....clear channel right up to the Dam.

I live in Central Maine now....since early 80s... and we've had a dozen bad storms, but they never added up to a typical winter that I had in my kid years.

[2naSalit]

5. That's how I remember it...

I was just up the coast along the north end of Casco Bay.

I'm in the Rockies, since 1990 though I started coming here in the mid '70s, and I haven't seen a "good winter" in quite some time and can only remember a few really snowy winters since I moved here. The cold winters ended around 2010 where we would have several days of serious sub-zero temps though I remember brutal cold that would last for weeks at a time. Haven't seen that since about the late '80s.

I have experienced -50F a few times up here but not since around 2010.

[OAITW r.2.0]

7. Interestingly enough.....I don't think we have had a day 0ver 32 degrees in the last 4 weeks.

It's below zero again tonight....like a lotta nights since I can't remember when.

[2naSalit]

9. Right?

The coldest I can remember over there was -15F and it was only for a day or two.

I keep an eye on the large-scale movement of air masses because the weather is a component of nature that rules one's daily events in the mountains. So I check a few maps on this site: https://www.aviationweather.gov/satellite

There, a picture tells a week's worth of weather.

[OAITW r.2.0]

10. Access to weather data helps your preparation.

Mitigating life's potential problems. Forewarned is forearmed.

[2naSalit]

11. Sure is. ...nt

[diane in sf]

2. I remember. People were dragging sleds around town.

[mopinko]

3. i remember it well.

born and raised in the western burbs. i was 12, and my mom worked at the hospital down the street. we had nurses and x-ray techs sleeping on our floor for a couple nights.

[Harker]

17. I was a kid in Hinsdale, and that was my last winter in Illinois.

My family moved to Colorado, which I imagined as a frozen wasteland.

[pazzyanne]

4. I remember!

We had actual barricades that did not allow people to leave town. That was a long winter.

[OAITW r.2.0]

8. Where did you live?

Did you file suit?

[pazzyanne]

16. Luverne, MN,

in the SW corner of MN. The blizzard moved in and lasted 3 days. County and State snow blowers came in to clear city streets. We had to locate our cars that were parked on the street and mark them with red flags so the snowplows wouldn't them.

We also had 5 to 6 weeks of snow after the blizzard where school dismissed at noon on Thursday and were out the following Friday due to smaller snowstorms. We joked about the storms having a regular schedule.

"Jan 16, 1967, a short lived, fast-moving blizzard resulted in 7 deaths statewide, some from snow shoveling. It was one of the stormiest winters with six separate blizzard warnings in the state and total snowfalls ranging from 30 to 50 inches in northern counties from the six storms."

[aggiesal]

6. I was 5 living in NW Indiana ...

and I remember cars abandoned on the freeways.

[hoosierspud]

12. I remember that blizzard!

I was living in South Bend and the snow plows piled a huge mountain of snow on the corner of our street and the main drag of our housing development. My two fellow tomboys and I dug a good sized space into it and used it as a hidden fort to throw snowballs at cars. I think it finally melted about May.

[blue-wave]

13. Oh Wow! Thanks for the memories!!

I was just a kid back then. We had a huge snow drift against our garage. My brothers, sisters and I shoveled all the snow from the long driveway and piled it on the snow drift. We them tunneled through it after packing it tightly to make a snow fort. Not advising anyone to ever repeat what we did, I've since heard horror stories of snow forts collapsing on top of people.

We also walked our toboggan down to the expressway and had fun sliding down the landscaped sections of a clover leaf off-on ramp. The expressway was dug out lower than the rest of the neighborhood.

One more. We shoveled out a section of the back yard(a big yard) and ran a water hose out the house window. We made our own skating rink. Played hockey and just skated at times with all the neighborhood kids too. Mom was not thrilled about the hose at first but we worked on her and she did learn to like the project.

Chicago was a great place to raise kids!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

14. I don't remember it: this young draftee was stationed elsewhere at the time, but, ...

... I remember the hubbub over the '79 blizzard that propelled Jane Byrne into the mayor's office. Mayor Bilandic was blamed for the slow removal.

Weather has consequences.

[Duppers]

15. Oh WOW!! 😲

Anyone remember the milder "Snowmageddon" in Baltimore in 2010?







I've personal pics of this but cannot reach them at the moment.

[kacekwl]

18. I remember the day before us kids were

playing softball on the corner in t-shirts it was that warm.

[orleans]

19. i heard (either in this video i posted, or on local news talking about 1967 blizzard)

that the initial forecast was for rain; it was supposed to rain. so when the snow started at 4 or 5 in the morning it was a surprise

[Martin Eden]

21. 16 inch softball with no gloves, I bet.

That's the sport I grew up playing on the SW side near Midway Airport.

[kacekwl]

22. Of course.

We didn't have a park near by so the corner it was. The sewer covers were the bases. Good times until a window got broken.

[Martin Eden]

20. I remember it well, as a 9-year old who lived through it.

For a kid it was great fun. Instead of school we got to play in snow drifts that towered over our heads. I could walk over our backyard fence into the alley.

My dad's big old Buick wasn't as good in the snow as my aunt's VW Beetle, so he borrowed her car to get around until the streets returned to (somehat) normal.

We lived on the SW side between Midway Airport and the Stevenson expressway (I-55).