This is bad.

[wnylib]

90. I lived in Westlake for 5 years,

and worked in the city. My husband worked in North Olmsted. The blizzard was on January 26, 1978. I remember the date because it was the anniversary of my MIL's death.

Before the blizzard there had been several heavy snowfalls already, followed by rain and thaw each time. The day before the blizzard, the temp reached 60 during the day, with a lot of rain. That night the forecast said another storm was coming and winds could reach 35 to 40 mph, with higher gusts. I did not believe them.

I fell asleep on the couch watching a late weather report in our first floor apartment. The wind woke me up at 5:00 am. I looked out and yelled, "Holy sh!t!" which woke up my husband.

The snow was coming down in totally horizontal sheets. The whole row of sapling evergreens in front of our building was flapping horizontally. Snow was flying through the A/C and pooling on the floor. The cat was racing to the window and back to me. The temp had dropped 20 degrees in one hour and kept going down.

Foolishly, I bundled up for work and went out to my car in the parking lot, next to an empty wooded lot. The sidewalk was sheer ice where the rainwater froze instantly. The sheets of rain had frozen on my car, completely encasing it in one inch thick ice. I could not even grip the door handle. Then a tree in the empty lot snapped in two and the upper part flew over my head.

I could not open the building's exterior door to get back inside because the wind was too strong. I caught my husband's attention through the living room window and he pushed from inside while I pulled from outside. Once open, we could not close it until he grabbed the door and I grabbed his waist to pull together.

Winds were steady around 50 to 60 mph, but there were gusts (quite a few of them) that reached 80. One gust was clocked at 110 mph (at the lakefront airport).

The TV scene I remember most was a local NBC reporter standing in a downtown bus shelter, warning people to stay away from the downtown area due to broken office windows and flying debris. As if on cue, the bus shelter lifted up and blew away while she was talking. Then the screen went blank.

It was like a land hurricane, with snow.

I90 went behind our building. We could see bobbing lights through the swirling snow where lines of people, tied together by ropes, stretched out to the expressway to rescue people trapped in cars.

I have seen other blizzards, but none as bad as that one.

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