There’s some snow on the ground right now in most of West Virginia and a potential big storm coming this weekend, but trust me, this is nothing compared to the weather event now referred to as the Great Blizzard of 1978.
If you lived through it, 48 years ago today, you know what I’m talking about.
The Great Blizzard of 1978 was rare in the way that it hit Charleston harder than some of the other parts of the state that usually get the worst of it.
Mid-January of 1978 was an impactful time. A coal strike strike was moving into its sixth week and with coal stockpiles dwindling at power plants, mandatory electricity rationing was on the table. Governor Jay Rockefeller refused to call in the National Guard to break the strike, a decision popular with miners but criticized by mine owners.
The day before the storm hit on January 19th, in Huntington, the WVU women’s basketball team edged Marshall, 51–50 at the gone but not forgotten Memorial Field House.
The Great Blizzard of 1978 came as a surprise due primarily to forecasting errors and the unexpected behavior of the storm’s thermal structure.
The National Weather Service was caught completely off guard, meteorologists believed the storm would largely miss the state. As it approached, the forecast changed from from a dusting, to two inches, to six inches and finally to a foot or more of snow — too late for residents to be ready.
Forecasters thought warmer air from the Carolinas would move in, causing the snow to change into freezing rain by the afternoon of January 20, but the temperature never rose above freezing.
More snow fell in the lowlands than in the higher elevations, which is very rare. Charleston already had eight inches of snow on the ground and the storm added nearly 16 and a half inches of new show on top of that.
Because the storm hit West Virginia while many were sleeping, the state was paralyzed almost instantly. The storm closed roads for days.
Another note on the Great Blizzard of 1978; it could have actually been worse.
There was another huge storm the following weekend that hammered large parts of Ohio and Indiana. That storm stranded the WVU men’s basketball team at Notre Dame the day after losing to the Irish in Sound Bend. But it was mostly rain in West Virginia, melting some of that snow, causing serious flooding along the Little Kanawha and Tug Fork River.
Charleston got a record total of nearly forty inches of snow in January of 1978, there was snow on the ground for two straight months, until nearly the last week of March.
The Great Blizzard of 1978 in West Virginia, gone but certainly not forgotten for those who experienced it, beginning on this date, January 19, 1978.