This deep freeze is a "re-run" of 77/78 winters
It was sooooo brutally cold AND snowy, businesses & schools went on half days or closed altogether.. sometimes there was no heat
the link below is a small re-telling of it..We lived it 
The article is about Ohio..we lived in northern Indiana.. The brutal winter spanned Illinois/Indiana/Michigan/Ohio and other states
I still remember my son ( he was 3) would turn on the tv and wait patiently for the weather.. If it did not have a minus, he could go outside for a bit.. my kid was tough 
our street looked just like this
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https://www.wcpo.com/news/our-community/from-the-vault/from-the-vault-back-to-back-winters-of-1976-77-and-1977-78-were-coldest-snowiest
The Ohio River froze in '77. A crippling blizzard hit in '78.
For two straight years, it was Elsa, Mr. Freeze and Old Man Winter against the Tri-State, and winters have never been harsher. If you lived through those two historic seasons here, you probably have a story to tell.Maybe you were among the hundreds who walked across the river in '77. Maybe it took you days to dig your car out of the snowdrifts that rose to 9 to 12 feet during the Blizzard of '78. Like every winter since, every winter to come will be compared to those back-to-back blasts of frigid cold and snow that crippled the region.
In each year, the biggest events happened in January.
In 1977, it was the brutal cold – 26 consecutive days with below-freezing temperatures capped by three straight record-setting days:
> Minus 21 on Jan. 16;
> Minus 24 on Jan. 17;
> Minus 25 on Jan. 18.
The temperature stayed below zero for 58 straight hours. Pipes burst and car batteries died. That's also when the river froze for the first time since 1958 and only the 13th time in recorded history.
Photo courtesy of Kenton County Public Library
The river stayed frozen for six days - Jan. 18-23. The ice was estimated to be 6 to 12 inches thick. There was a slight warmup that broke the ice, but it froze again for nine days - Jan. 30 to Feb. 7. Tugboats occasionally cut a path down the middle of the river, but the ice just packed together again. Boat traffic was suspended from Jan. 25 to Feb. 2. It was the coldest January on record with an average temperature of 12 degrees (The normal average was 31.1). January 1977 also set that month's record for snowfall with 30.3 inches (the normal was 6). And the 1976-77 winter set a Tri-State snowfall record with 47.3 inches. But those snow records fell 12 months later.
In 1978, what some called the worst blizzard in U.S. history slammed into the Tri-State and the Midwest on the night Jan. 25. continuing into the next day. It brought 6.9 inches of snow on top of 14 inches already on the ground. It also brought sustained winds of 35 mph with gusts up to 70, and temperatures that dropped to zero. It was a whiteout, a knockout punch. Those two winters – 76-77 and 77-78 - were the coldest and snowiest on record.
snip for much more
https://www.google.com/search?q=indiana+1977+winter&tbm=isch&source=hp&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwix-OuQ4pTgAhVOwMQHHVH4D2oQsAR6BAgAEAE
= new reply since forum marked as read
the snow in Florida that day? Argggh.
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Snow fell on an eventful week in Miami-Dade -- and the United States.
Newly elected President Jimmy Carter's inauguration was scheduled the following day; Miami-Dade commissioners had passed the controversial county ordinance banning discrimination against gays the day before, setting the stage for a bitter battle between singer Anita Bryant and homosexuals.
And on television, a highly anticipated mini-series was about to air. In Miami, Dorothy Jenkins Fields, 64, founder of the Black Archives and then a school librarian, said the snow is a blur to her. That's because the mini-series Roots, based on Alex Haley's book, was about to premiere.
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article1931272.html#storylink=cpy
