INDIANAPOLIS — Monday marks 43 years since the “Blizzard of 1978” hit Indiana.
On Jan. 25, 1978, at 3:45 p.m., the National Weather Service issued a Blizzard Warning for the entire state — the first time that had ever happened. The Indianapolis International Airport reported significant snowfall for 31 straight hours. On Jan. 26, Indiana State Police considered all roads in the state to be closed. The National Guard was sent in to remove stranded semis on I-65. Indianapolis ended up receiving 15.5 inches of snow, but the brutal winds continued even after the snow ended, creating snowdrifts that were up to 25 feet high and caused wind chills to drop to -50 degrees.
Meanwhile, some other parts of the state, like South Bend, received three feet of snow.
Mark Gish was one of the millions of Hoosiers that remember the historic event. At the time, he was eight years old, living in Madison, a city in southern Indiana along the Ohio River.
“My mother was a school teacher, and the school was in our neighborhood,” Gish said. “The trucks were trying to clear the parking lots and they kept plowing and plowing, and clearing, and the mounds of snow kept getting higher, and higher, and higher.”
He remembers some high school students would come over to the school parking lot and would start digging into the large snow mounds.
“They actually made a series of tunnels through those, and they were big enough that us little kids would be able to walk through them standing straight up,” Gish said. “It was like we had our own little cave system.”
Gish added that they went nearly two months without school. Once there were rumors that school might open back up, they’d listen to the radio every morning. Instead of reading off a long list of school closures, if you heard your school name, that meant it was open.
“They didn’t have make-up days back then. So when we did go back to school, finally, they had to add 30 minutes to the school day for the rest of the year to make up for that lost time.”
Julie Smith was also a first-grade student at the time of the blizzard, living in Bluffton, a town in northeast Indiana. Her family actually had to be rescued from their home by an Army personnel carrier.
“The heat went out in our house,” she said. “We could not get it to come back on or stay on, and there was too much snow to just drive somewhere else.”
Smith also recalls not seeing her dad for a few days, because he was a member of the National Guard.
“They were actually in charge of coordinating all of the rescues and helping people get their needs met,” she said. “So he stayed at the armory for a few days.”
Like many other Hoosiers, Smith vividly remembers the snowdrifts and piles that were several feet tall, like the one that covered the lamp post at the edge of their yard.
“We have a picture of me standing on top of the lamp post,” she said.
“At the time, being a little kid, I didn’t realize I was living through a major weather event in history.”
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