There Were Two “Blizzards of 1978” — and They Were Nothing Alike

January 25–27: The Great Blizzard (“Cleveland Superbomb”)

Two low-pressure systems — one from the Gulf, one from the Plains — merged over the Ohio Valley and deepened explosively overnight into January 26. The central pressure bottomed out at 956.0 mb (28.23 inHg) at Mount Clemens, Michigan, with an absolute low of 955.5 mb measured just across the border in Sarnia, Ontario. It was, at the time, the lowest non-tropical barometric pressure ever recorded in the mainland United States — a record that held until the Upper Midwest storm of October 2010.

That kind of pressure gradient behaves like a hurricane. Gusts reached 111 mph, snow fell sideways, and drifts swallowed one-story homes — 10 to 20 feet in Indiana, as high as 25 feet in spots. Muskegon, Michigan measured 52 inches of snow. Wind chills hit roughly −60°Facross Ohio. The storm killed about 70 people regionwide, 51 of them in Ohio, making it the deadliest blizzard in the state’s history. Ohio called out the National Guard; thousands were stranded in cars, schools and factories for days.

February 5–7: The Northeastern Blizzard

Five weeks later a nor’easter formed off the Carolinas, tracked up the coast, and then stalled just south of New England — the worst possible place for it to sit. It snowed in Boston for more than a day straight. The city ended with 27.1 inches, a record 24-hour and single-storm total at the time and still Boston’s second-heaviest snowstorm on record. Providence, Rhode Island took about 27.6 inches, its greatest snowstorm ever; parts of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, topped 40 inches.

Because the storm arrived during the Monday-morning commute, thousands of cars were caught on the roads. More than a hundred drivers were stranded on Route 128 outside Boston, and 14 people died in their vehicles on Route 128 and I-95 from carbon-monoxide poisoning as tailpipes buried in the drifts. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis banned all non-emergency driving for a week. The storm killed about 100 people across the region, injured roughly 4,500, and caused $520 million in 1978 damage; the highest gust, 111 mph, was clocked near Scituate, Massachusetts.

What Our Records Show About the Cold

Here is the part no other page has. We pulled every overnight-low reading from our NOAA station data for each storm window and compared it to the 1970–2026 average for the same states and month. The two storms split in a way the snowfall totals don’t reveal.

February nor’easter — a genuine Arctic outbreak

Overnight lows across the Northeast ran 12 to 15°F below normal — this was deep cold and heavy snow at once.

January Superbomb — the surprise: not that cold

The headline-grabbing January storm’s overnight lows were only modestly below normal in Ohio (−8.6°F) — and in Michigan they actually ran above normal. The lethal part was the wind and the pressure crash, which drove the −60°F wind chills; the thermometer minimums themselves were nowhere near record territory.

Overnight-low (tmin) averages for each storm window vs the 1970–2026 average for the same states and month, computed from our NOAA GHCN-Daily station data on October 12, 2026, with a quality-control filter. Station counts per state ranged from 14 (Rhode Island — small sample) to 405 (New York). Snowfall, pressure and wind figures above are from official NWS records, not this dataset — 1978 station snowfall coverage is too sparse to reproduce the real totals.

Why 1978 Still Sets the Bar

New England has had bigger single snowfalls since — Boston’s 27.6 inches in February 2003 nudged 1978 into second place — and the 1993 “Storm of the Century” covered far more ground. But no later storm combined the February blizzard’s snow, wind, cold and sheer timing the way that one did, and nothing has matched the January storm’s pressure in the eastern US to this day. For most people who lived through either, 1978 is still the storm every other blizzard gets measured against.

It also sits near the top of any honest ranking of US winter disasters — see where it lands among the worst blizzards in US history and the worst winters in US history.

Frequently Asked Questions

Keep Exploring

See how 1978 ranks against the other great snowstorms in the worst blizzards in US history, which cities live with winter like this in the coldest cities in America, and what the coming season may hold in our 2026–27 winter forecast. You can also look up the snow, wind or cold on any day in your town’s past with our weather-history tool — if you have a photo or a reading from either 1978 storm, we’d like to see it.

Sources & Method

Snowfall, pressure, wind and death figures for the January storm are from the NWS and the record of the Great Blizzard of 1978 (956.0 mb at Mount Clemens, MI; ~70 deaths, 51 in Ohio; 111 mph gusts; 52 inches at Muskegon). February figures are from the record of the Northeastern US blizzard of 1978 (Boston 27.1 in, Providence ~27.6 in, ~100 deaths, 4,500 injuries, $520M, 111 mph gust near Scituate). The temperature-anomaly tables were computed on October 12, 2026 from our Neon NOAA GHCN-Daily station table: average overnight low per state during each storm window minus that state’s 1970–2026 average low for the same month, with a quality-control filter applied. Snowfall is cited to NWS rather than derived from our database because 1978 station snowfall coverage is incomplete.