Chicago Blizzard 1967 Radio Reports Part I 

My grandfather was the fire chief mentioned in the recording. Growing up in the Heights at that time was wonderful. I was a toddler in 67 but I certainly remember that day and all of the stories friends and families had. 50 years and I still get choked up thinking back how great Chicago Heights was and how depressing it is now.

My sisters and I used to walk our dog, Friskie, down the long alley just a few steps from our home in Hyde Park. When we took him out during the blizzard, we almost couldn't find our way home. All of the little landmarks we knew had vanished under mountains of drifting snow. It turned out that we were walking on garage rooftops without realizing it - the snow was that deep!

Lived in Tacoma, Washington, in 1967. But we were very briefed on the blizzard Chicago. It was national news.

Great memories of this day! I lived in Dolton, IL and was 8 years old back then. The most snow Ive ever seen! Thank you so much for this awesome video!🙏I love to reminisce about the good old days! ❤🫠❤

I was 20 at this time. I remember it being very mild a few days before the storm. My brother and I walked 2 miles home from my guitar lesson that night hoping for an early Spring. It just kept snowing. I remember people abandoning their cars on the street as they couldn't move. It was unbelievable.

I was on leave from the Air Force and had visited my grandparents in eastern Kentucky. I picked THAT day to drive from there to Chicago to my parents' house. I left Kentucky early in the morning, about 6:00 am. There was no snow, just cloudy. I headed west along Route 52. I had a 1959 Chevy but there was a short in the radio wiring and it kept going on and off so I just left the radio off most of the time as it was annoying. Route 52 went through Cincinnati then to Indianapolis. Near Lafayette I would get on to Route 41 due north. It was between Cincinnati and Indianapolis that snow started. I began listening to the radio and found out about the huge storm heading that way. Somewhere near Kentland it started getting treacherous. I stopped at a gas station and they were kind enough to let me pull into a bay and put on my tire chains (I'm from Chicago!). But I didn't get much further when Route 52 was closed, so I turned west and went into Illinois. I made it to the little town of Watseka, about 60 miles south of Chicago, and all roads were closed. I made it to a little motel and shared a room with two truck drivers who were stuck. One of them was driving a beer truck! Spent two nights at that motel when roads started opening. I started north that morning and made it within four blocks of my parents' house near Midway Airport when I got completely stuck on a side street. That took over 13 hours of driving. Got my car out two days later. A week later I left to go to the Middle East.

I was 6 years old when this snowstorm hit. I remember going out and suddenly landing in snow that was up to my neck!!! I was SCARED!!!! Something I will never forget!

I always enjoy reading people's feedback/comments Re: such history and the time spent. You would have rocked it in film school. Grew up in Hammond, IN. This occurred before I was born.

I was in boot camp great lakes and it began snowing the day after I arrived. I shoveled snow in my civilian clothes. Had no idea it was such a blizzard since boot recruits didn’t get newspapers and radio access. There were 14,000 recruits keeping venues clear on base. No shortage of muscle to shovel around the clock.

I was 7 in 1967, and we kids all had a blast during the blizzard of '67! My brother and I dug Viet Kong-style tunnels in the massive snowbanks. BTW., I only saw one foreign car in the photos of snow-bound Chicagoland, now that is almost all we see!

Thank you for this great Blast from the Past HeelerZ soundZ! I love reading all the memories and comments from the greatest snow event ever.

I was 10 and lived on Carmen Ave. between Lincoln and Western. My brother had to go out the second floor window to shovel the snow away from the front door. I got a sled for Christmas and pulled it to the store for my mom. There was no bread or milk left. She bought powdered milk and flour. We had a blast playing in all that snow, building igloos and tunnels! And oh the snow ball fights!

i feel like im in a car listening the news that's weird!ilove this! ilike the sound!

I remember jumping off our garage roof into the snow drifts. I was 10 yrs. old. great time to be a kid back then. we lived in Rogers Park near Clark st and Pratt ave. I also found $20.00 laying on the street that day. that was alot of money in 1967. lol

This was a fun time. I was at my sisters house a 2 story, I loved jumping off the building and into the snow!

I grew up out there, what a time warp!!!

This is fascinating. I really love these old AM Radio clips. Thank you for posting.

I was 10 years old when this storm hit!

What I remember most about this day was waking up and being told schools were closed. I thought I was dreaming. What a happy day.

thank-you for recording this.I was 9yrs.old and still dont know why the nuns at St.Bernedadent in evergreen park didn't let us go home.till aprox,11:30 it was up to my belly button and I walked over 2/1/2ml.pushing the drift's with both hand crying I almost sat down and gave up but I could here my mother yelling.I had navy blue saddle shoe's that had to be peeled off.I was only 48pounds.I now suffer from ptsd as the tornado came threw our block

Even though it was a really powerful storm and really socked it to us back then, my husband & I look back on it with fond memories. I was 20 and he was 23. We were young then and had tons of energy. We lived in the Co-Ops in PF and all our neighbors banded together and we literally dug the whole parking lot out by hand over the course of a few days. Everything came to a stand still for three days and people skied down the middle of Western ave. It was great to time to help one another. ;-)

I loved listening to this and seeing the pictures! I grew up in Hazel Crest and recall this blizzard somewhat. We must have gotten out of school early that day (Pottawatomie School), and my neighbor/best friend was at our home because her mother, a teacher at Highlands Elementary, I believe, would typically get home a little later than we did. I remember looking out the front door at the accumulating snow and my mom getting off the phone with my friend's mom, who told her that some of the students couldn't get home because the snow was too deep for their parents to pick them up. So they were spending the night at the school. My friend and I thought it was a huge adventure, didn't really understand the seriousness of it at the time. I was 7, my friend was 8 at the time. My husband, a RU-vidr "Kent Oviatt: Vintage Tech," collects and repairs vintage and antique electronics, BTW! Check out his channel! Thanks again for this great blast from the past!

we dug out the cars on Warwick Ave to Pulaski. Also buried the cars of neighbors that refused to help. We walked down the middle of the expressway from Pulaski road to Addison. Could not believe all the abandoned cars, trucks and buses. What fun to be a kid that day! Luckily mom had a ton of groceries at home including hot chocolate with those little marshmallows Great memories, love the comments.

Thanks for the nice words Altfactor! It's either on part III or part IV, the radio announcer mentions the Cape Canaveral tragedy; i wasn't born when this all took place but found out about it when i first heard the original reel recordings; that was about 1985 or 86 for me, but because of my Love for snow i always found the reports very interesting; i converted the reels to mp3s and made these videos a couple years ago and still like to listen to them; sometimes i still play the reels!

This is pretty cool. WCGO was our local radio station in Chicago Heights, and the studio was located in our local shopping center where our mom did her shopping, just about 0.3 miles from our home. I remember this day very well; hearing the initial forecast for 4" of snow on WCGO while eating my cereal...then being sent home from Greenbriar Elementary school at lunch. I then remember my dad walking home from the Flossmoor IC station 'cuz he couldn't get his car out of the parking lot.

I was 9 years old and my older brother and I were picking my mother up from the hospital. She just had breast cancer surgery and we couldn't make it from the end of the street to 5 house's down to get her in the house. We lived near 79th and Kedzie

I was 13 when this happened, and my family lived in Park Ridge. Both of my parents left work early, and managed to make it home before it got too hopeless, although my mother's car was parked sideways in the driveway. I remember shoveling our drive and front sidewalk. A LOT. You would shovel in one direction, and when you turned around, you couldn't tell that it had been shoveled! I also had to get up on the roof to shovel snow off, especially after finding out that others had collapsed roofs from the weight of the snow. Hot cocoa NEVER tasted sooooo good!

This brings back some memories of when my Grandfather and his Brother were stuck in Chicago at the Union Stockards waiting out the storm during the 1967 Blizzard. They hauled about 30 head of fat cattle from our farmstead in Western Iowa to Chicago in a 1966 Chevrolet C-70 twin screw and a Wilson single deck cattle trailer. They offloaded the Cattle at the Union Stockyards after a six hour wait along (what I belive was along) Halsted and 47th St., and took shelter in the warm Stockyards cafe.

This is a great part of history.

Although I'm from Boston, I recall as a tyke seeing the "Huntley/Brinkley" newscast on January 27th, 1967, and this storm was their top story. But two hours later, this story was overshadowed nationally after news broke from Cape Canaveral that the three astronauts who were to fly Apollo 1 the next month had been killed in a flash fire that consumed the interior of their command module on the launch pad during a countdown rehearsal. Outside of Chicago, the storm immedietaly became a non-story.

OMG, this is awesome! I was 8 and remember it very well. I lived on Crawford ave across from Rich Central. My dad pulled me on a sled down the middle of Crawford Ave. to the grocery store on 183rd and Crawford in Country Club Hills. It was fun and scary at the same time.

Wow! Well i'm glad it all worked for You Obert! i always like to hear other peoples' experiences on this day; thanks for sharing!

Me and my friends actually dug out a snow tunnel to the nearby Jewel food store, about two blocks away! However, my mother refused to use it! I wonder why?

I was 15 years old the year of the "big snow". I was a student at Lane Tech high school and lived in the Lincoln Park neighborhood at the time. It took me hours to get home and by the time I did,my dad was leaving the house to come look for me.We kids didn't have to deal with cars or getting to work and we loved the snow!

Thanks for posting, Great quality for such an old recording,

@53operagirl Thanks for enjoying the clip! They were a fun project, and i always like when the subject of this blizzard stirs up stories like yours! i used to live in Park Forest as well.

FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY!

That must have been scary! Thanks for sharing that Dillysgirl! i always like to hear the stories that are sparked from these clips!

This was 2 months before I was born and I was born near Chicago

Great job putting this together.

@dmwierz459 Thanks! i always love hearing stories like yours when the subject of this blizzard would come up. i've been around the Heights for a long time too and remember WCGO. They just went off the air a couple of years ago. Supposedly WTAS's last broadcast was in the mid eighties.

@pfriverrat Excellent story Pfriv! glad to have read it! i wasn't born yet for the 67 blizzard either; my brother gave me this old reel player and a bunch of reels when i was eleven and this broadcast was one one of them. i've always loved snow and every year since i would listen to it, hoping for a winter like that. i guess You and me both finally got our experience with it this year huh?! i used to live in Park Forest too so i know the area; what an experience for You driving the plow!

@meezerlover Wow! That sounded like a great time actually. This was a big reason i wanted to put these together and post them; i wanted to share it all but i Love the real stories about it that i get, especially the one that are so close to home for me. i used to live in Park Forest myself, in the 90's. Thank You for sharing Meezerlover, and glad You enjoyed!

I remember this storm well...my daughter was 7 months old and I ran out of milk.. no snow blowers then, everything was done by hand. And we were told then that this storm would only amount to 4 inches...

I was 4 years old on the southeast side. Lots of snow. We were jumping off the 2nd floor fire escape into the back yard and then tunneling back to the steps to do it again. ..

I was 5 yrs old at the time and remember this vividly we lived in Wood Dale on school st .

@musicmom1212 Thanks for sharing Musicmom! i wanted to share these but i Love the stories i get back, especially the one close to home for me. i'm familiar with the area; i lived in P.F. and Chicago Hts! i'll bet that was a fun and scary time! i wasn't born then but my bro gave me an old reel player and reels when i was eleven in the mid-eighties and one of the reels had this broadcast on it. Being a big snow fan i would play it every year hoping for a winter like that; then 2011 happened!

I was 6 years old when this happened

@collegeman1988 ...guess they had some time on their hands that day lol! Thanks for sharing the story Collegeman; always like when these clips stir up stories and this was a good one!

I was a little kid when all this 1967 snow was going on

A blizzard in Chicago in January. Who'd a guessed it?

I lived in McKinley Park near Archer and 35th. It was never so quiet as it was the next morning. Then we started shoveling.....

@crazymae328 i know what you mean! i've had these tape reels for almost twenty six years now and i've been listening to them for that long. Even though i was born in the mid seventies and wasn't here for the '67, i would listen to this every winter and pretend i was there. That reel and the player both still work to this day and even though the final mp3 of it here was filtered a little, it didn't need much. The original is still pretty clear!

God morning, I was nine years old when the snow of 1967 hit Chicago, we waited to hear that there would be no school that day. We were elated about that. My dad had to put on his boots and find his shovel in order to shovel the mountain of snow on our front and back steps. I was told the snow covered the schools doors, and we would have to wait it out at home before we could return to school. I didn't care we had a snow day and was happy about it. I didn't know people died during that time, our mother and father didn't speak of such this to us.

@retroexplosion1. i was lucky to be given this tape reel with the audio from my brother when i was about ten. i actually wasn't born until after this storm either; seven years later, but i've been listening to that tape for 25 years, waiting for a blizzard like 2011!

Nice job!

I was 11, we aready had a bunch of snow on the ground and then this hit. My dad stuffed me full of oat meal, dressed me up nice and warm and then pushed me out the bathroom window with a snow shovel so I could dig the front door out. we shoveled over to the neighbors and they joined us. House by house we dug the whole neighbor hood out. Joining forces as we went. Most beautiful time I ever remember of people coming together.

The day before this storm I washed my car in shorts. Had to drive to Elgin to register for college or risk the draft. Nearly died on that road.

@meezerlover Wow that is crazy. i heard about the bread and milk shortages back then. If it makes you feel any better though, my wife and i dug our driveway out last week with one shovel; no snow blower for us in 2011 either, and it's about a four-car sized driveway. Well we weren't getting much Chicago snow there for years it seemed. i must say it was fun though!

Stand by for NEEEEWS!!!!

I remember this well

@nursesoflosangeles Thank You for pointing that out Nurses! i know that not all the pictures jived completely with everything; did the best i could with the stills i found; just wish i had all pictures from the actual blizzard here; the audio however is completely genuine.

@Nnuku72 Thanks and also thanks for letting me hog the computer for a while to do them!

i came to Chicago January 1967 and live near Irving Park came straight from Sicily italy

My dad was 11 almost 12 yrs in January 1967 he missed school for a week after the storm

It worked out great. Gave up trying to unfreeze thighs in the midwest and living in the deserts of south California. I also remembered the storm was so bad my younger brother travelled with me and we brought the family dog! On the trip back from Elgin we hit a snow drift that killed the engine right in front of a tow truck. What luck.

@stevezur No problem! It was fun putting it all together. i still have the original reels and the reel player, which are both still in tact and work fine! (i don't think the reel player records anymore, but still plays!) Even though i recorded the audio into the computer and filtered it a little bit admittedly, the original reel is still in good shape! Every year, sometime in mid winter i play the original reels for personal tradition and enjoyment.

i was born and raise in sauk village . i remember it very well i was 12 yrs old. wow so much snow. it just keep coming down it started about 4pm if i remember correctly and by about 9 pm i knew there would be NO SCHOOL the next day. good times!

lived in the western subs---was 60 the day before..we played baseball on the street---LOL

@SFConifer i'm ready for 2011 Pt II!

@depechemodefan001 i know. i just wish no one was put in a bad situation because of the snow and everyone could be at home enjoying it instead.

I bet even the food taste better back in 67’. Now everything is processed and bad for ya!

The Hawk

I was 24, and I remember. I spent the night in a taxi, and I am 5'9", and snow was over my chest, as I Finally plowed through the alley to my South Shore Apartment. I still went to work, that afternoon.

@topthrilldragster20 Yes and we were only a few inches away from number one! is it me or does it seem like '79 was a larger storm than '99?

@boonshit I don't know. I wasn't even a year old when we got the snow in 1979.

I was conceived about 9 months after this snowstorm, and I was born in Chicago. My parents didn't go to work on the day of the snowstorm . . . hmm, I wonder what they did that day?

Then on Feb. 7, 1967, it would be New York City's turn.

@boonshit Oops! I meant to say that I was BORN about 9 months after this snowstorm. Anytime I've asked my mother what my parents did that day, she denies that they worked to create me since they couldn't go to work.

i believe it is BigMike!

isn't it crazy? it's like you posted this in dec 2010 and predicted the feb 2011 blizzard! lol

20.2 inches of snow 3rd highest ever!!

Get ready for Blizzard 2011

I hear a gunshots

Filler photos are ok, but that one of nurses at 1:37 is from the early 1900s.

So at 9:45 or so, how does the completed Hancock Center get into a 1967 film? I am all about time travel but did not realize it was available in '67.

Just as if Natural disaster was what people wanted. Natural conditions can bring out the best in people. BK

@SFConifer et tu?

I call bullshit on the estimates of stranded people. 300 at Thornridge HS? 150 at Riverdale Village hall? 200 at Dalton Bowl? 700 at Lansing? Bullshit. Divide those estimates by 10.

I don't know who did the editing on this but it's clearly made to appear that it occurred 40-50 years before it actually happened. The streams of video noise that appear throughout the video did not appear to viewers of television at the time this happened.