Mark's Blog

The newspaper today gave the figure of 26 inches (66 cm) as a semi-offical snowfall though I only measured 24 inches at our house. The city opened St. John's UCC for a warming center for travelers and had 46 people stop in of which 29 spent the night. Luckily, it was very cold during the snow (steady temperatures around 9 - 10 degrees Farenheit) so the snow was rather fine and light and there was practically no ice at all. The paper said this was the greatest snow fall from a single storm since 1978. They listed the same amount of snow fall for that storm but said it covered most of Northwest Indiana. The paper did not give an amount for neighboring towns for this weekend's storm but I would guess that places like Chesterton (maybe 12 miles away) received 6 to 8 inches.

Of course people still talk about the "big" storm of 1958. They already had 12 inches of snow on the ground when it started snowing around 11 AM one day. They got another 36 - 40 inches (depending where you were in town,) most all of it by 11 PM of that day. Besides the extreme amount of show, it was memorable for the speed of the snow fall and the localization. The Pines, which can't be more then six miles away, received only 12 inches while Valparaiso, 20 some miles away, received 3-4 inches. They brought in snow removal equipment from Chicago and South Bend and piled the snow in Washington Park. They say there was still mounds of melting snow in the park through the end of June that year.

Have you found any old photos on the web of the "big" storm of 1958?