My Blizzard of ’78 story

January 27, 2013
WTVN TV Channel 10 weatherman Chris Bradley asked us to share our Blizzard of ’78 stories; today is the 35th anniversary of that landmark weather day. 
Here’s mine:
I was 8 months pregnant, and woke up to the sound of thunder and our old house rattling like Grendl was at the door. I went to the dining room windows and saw snow flying sideways in 60-plus mph winds at the windows, and feared they would break from the fearsome force coming at them. I was terrified that I would go into early labor, but luckily, that did not happen. When the blizzard was finished, we had snow up nearly to the top of our back door and snow so deep down the street in front of our house that a normal-sized person could not walk in it, because it was chest-high. Fortunately, we had a huge fireplace in our living room, which had a sofa bed as well as French doors that closed it off from the rest of the house. We lived in there for 3 days, when our power came back on, cooking in the fireplace like old-fashioned pioneers. After the roads cleared, which in my memory took two weeks, we took a drive through the nearby countryside and were astounded at the terrifying 7- to 12-foot walls of snow along the sides; it was like a sci-fi novel of a frozen planet. On the first truly warm day when teachers and students were all back to school and the roads were clear and the landscape had started to look normal again (at least for winter in Ohio), in the middle of a thaw with water dripping and running everywhere, my son, my first child Nicholas was born two weeks after his due date. 
We have always joked that he had been waiting for that first warm day all along.