It was the worst snowstorm to ever hit the state and stopped just about everything in central Indiana for days.
Officially, 15.5 inches of snow fell at the airport, but some places north of the city had more than 3 feet of snow. The entire city was shut down, including Indianapolis International Airport, which closed because of whiteout conditions.
The blizzard raged on for three days, packing blinding snow and whiteout conditions, with wind gusts of up to 60 mph and wind chill temperatures that dipped to 50 below zero.
Snowdrifts piled up to 20 feet high, making travel all but impossible. National Guard tanks were deployed to rescue stranded motorists. Schools were closed for 2 weeks.
The Blizzard of '78 became the measuring stick by which all other winter storms have been measured ever since in Indiana.
Flash forward to January 5th, 2014. Actually, let's go a couple days previous to that. There's a storm brewing. LOTS of snow and SUBZERO temperatures. It's snowmageddon! Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Saturday morning I get up early because I have errands to run. One of which was to get my oil changed. That took about an hour. During that time, I didn't hear any news. I didn't watch any before I left the house either. Next up, the grocery store. Here's where it gets fun!
Apparently, I missed the Governor's announcement that you, John Q Public, ought to have enough water and food to get you through 3 days. You know, due to the storm of the century. The grocery store parking lot usually looks a lot like the below picture. On Saturday though, it was COMPLETELY full, except for a few spot down at the end;
Whoa. I couldn't go home though! I had to check it out. So I went in. But there were no carts. Not because a worker hadn't brought them in...nooooooo....but because they were ALL in use. Wanna be shoppers were following shoppers that were done, out to their cars so they could get their cart!!! What??? It was nuts. There were no potatoes, celery, grapes or onions. There was very little bread and hardly any meat. I have never seen anything like it! I just walked through the store giggling the whole time at the panic! I guess it's not funny but all I could think was, so you can't drive for a few DAYS. Big effing deal! You might have thought people were hunkering down for the duration of winter! What do I know.
In my neck of the woods, we ended up with 13.5 inches of snow. (on top of the 6 we already had) We lost our Internet and cable for 3 days. They didn't plow our street until Wednesday. The Governor declared a snow emergency Monday and closed all state offices. Unless you were emergency personnel, stay off the roads. I was totally ok with that :-)
I watched movies, drank wine and did these;
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