BUFFALO, N.Y. — While the Blizzard of '77 hit on January 28 of that year, it was months in the making.
We'll start with Lake Erie. It often won't freeze until February. But that winter, it was frozen by December 14. That's because November and December were bitter cold.
Leading up to the storm, the temperature had not risen above freezing for 34 straight days. And from the time the lake froze until the blizzard, we got 93.5 of snow.
That led to a deep snow pack on top of the frozen lake.
Same story in the city. Buffalo had snow for 28 straight days leading up to the storm.
There was nowhere to put it. So you had tons of snow on the lake, a 37-inch snow depth piled in the city, and here comes the blizzard.
It brought 69 mile-an-hour wind gusts, moving around all that snow. Our temperature dropped from 26 degrees to zero in just four hours.
And here's the worst part: The low pressure system stalled over Southern Ontario.The winds whipped through our region for three days.
That led to snow drifts as high as 30 feet, despite only 12 inches of snow actually falling from the sky during the entire storm.