This past December was the warmest on record. Flashback to 50 years ago in 1966, winds increased to a gusting 60 miles per hour, temperatures dropped to about 30 degrees below zeroFahrenheit and Oswego experienced 102 inches of snowfall on Jan. 27.
“It started so slowly and beautifully,” said Deborah Hill, a 1966 alumna. “And then, ka-boom!”
The three-day snowstorm crippled the city of Oswego for a week but lasted in the memories of students and residents for years to come.
At the time, cell phones, Internet and Doppler Radar were nonexistent and, although snow storms are a common winter occurrence in the Oswego area, many people were left unprepared.
“We don’t remember hearing anything and of course it is not like nowadays when you turn on the news or your phone,” Deborah Hill said. “It just happened.”
Jim Farfaglia grew up in the bordering town of Fulton and was 10 years-old at the time of the blizzard of 1966 and was so amazed by the storm that, last year he published a book entitled “Voices in the Storm: Stories from the Blizzard of ’66.”
Farfaglia found in his research that this storm was a Nor’eastern storm that came off of the Atlantic. The winds of the Nor’eastern storm got caught by Lake Ontario and turned into a lake effect storm.
Farfaglia recalls talking to a snow plower at the time and to him, was just one big storm because it never stopped long enough for the city to stop plowing.
Fortunately, the winds were so high it prevented snow piling on rooftops, causing little to no damage. Although lake effect snow is usually light and fluffy, the wind caused the snow to become tightly compact.
In some areas, the snow was packed so tightly that people had to chisel the snow out Farfaglia said. Others used dynamite to break up the snow. Hill and her husband Paul recalled the city dumping snow into the river.
During the blizzard, streets were vacant with whiteout conditions and the city issued a driving ban. By the time the storm was at its peak, the snow had buried most of the parked cars.
“I remember my little car, a rear engine Chevy Corvair, was buried under the snow and all that was visible was the antenna,” said Ginny Nuedling Erickson, a 1966 graduate.
After the car ban, residents would tie clothing to their car antennas to make sure other drivers could see their car through the tunnels of snow.
“When we could finally get out, we tried to find cars and worried the plows would get them,” said alumna Leslie Herrmann. “Many put socks, shorts, shirts and underwear on their car antennas as an indicator. I had a little Ford Falcon convertible with the aerial coming off the trunk at an angle, so socks would not help me. We did find the car and took away the snow from the car windows so you could see in and recognize it was a car, but there was still too much snow.”
By the time the storm ended, city officials requested aid and equipment. Snow plows came from Long Island to relieve Oswego from the packed dense snow. Snow piles amounted to the heights of second story houses.
Jayne Flynn, ’66 alumna, lived in the Arethusa house on 5th St, a sorority house at the time. Like many of her neighbors, she experienced the height of the snow.
“Being young, we did what young people did,” Flynn said. “We jumped out of the second floor windows into the snow. We put our bathing suits on and had a beach party.”
Although the storm brought camaraderie, people were shut into their houses leaving some stranded with lack of food or supplies.
After the storm, Hill’s now-husband, Paul was able to get out of his house on Bridge Street and remembers walking with his roommate to the local grocery store.
“The only thing left was something like ketchup, mustard and horseradish sauce,” Paul said.
People who were stranded mainly relied on what they had in the houses. New York state Gov. Nelson Rockefeller authorized emergency airlifts to help people who were stranded.
“I remember having a lot of pancakes,” Flynn said. “We put tomato soup on pasta for a faux-pasta dinner. Only when we saw the helicopters overhead did we realize how serious the situation was.”
According to Farfaglia, helicopters were sent to deliver food and medicine to people in need. They took people with medical emergencies out to receive proper treatment.
“One of the things I learned about was that diabetes was just being understood as a disease and insulin was vital and people needed their insulin regularly or they would die, so there were a lot of stories of pharmacies that would airlift medicine,” Farfaglia said.
Sandy Grimm was a senior at the time. She and her sorority sister, Carol Fisher, were staying with their boyfriends in a trailer in Fallbrook to “wait out the storm.”
“The food supplies started to run low and nothing was open due to the storm,” Grimm said. “But then, we all realized that Carol was a diabetic and would soon run out of insulin, which was an even more serious complication.”
According to Grimm, the fire department eventually was able to get her Fisher her insulin and get them out of the trailer.
Farfaglia discovered that, although some people lost power, National Grid, known as Niagara Mohawk at the time, worked through the storm to restore the power.
Although Oswego State was not in session when the storm hit, school was closed the first couple days of the semester. According to Herman, the college was closed for over a week, which was unheard of.
In some ways, the blizzard changed the way people viewed winters. Paul Hill was surprised to find school cancelled due to snow years later as a student teacher when the sun was shining with only a few inches of snow on the ground.
“I would definitely consider one of the biggest storms of the century,” Hill said.
