The Passing Storm by Christine Nolfi

AUTHOR’S NOTE

On January 25, 1978, residents in northeastern Ohio went to bed unaware that two low-pressure systems converging over the state would build into a blizzard for the record books.

The Ohio Turnpike shut down for the first time in its history, and ten-foot snowdrifts pummeled houses and buried cars. A major general of the Ohio National Guard described the White Hurricane’s effect on transportation as comparable to a nuclear attack. Windchills plummeted to forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit; fifty-one Ohioans died during the blizzard, many as they huddled trapped in their cars, or as they tried to walk to safety in whiteout conditions.

Geauga County—where this novel takes place and where my parents and three younger sisters resided in 1978—is snowbelt country in the best of times. During the White Hurricane, the city of Chardon came to a standstill for days.

At the time of the blizzard, I was a college student safely ensconced in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, renting a room from one of my father’s old fraternity brothers. And while I didn’t experience the worst effects of the White Hurricane, the frightening stories my parents and younger sisters told for years to come were destined, one day, to find their way into one of my books.

For readers who lived through the real White Hurricane, I hope you won’t mind that I moved the historic storm to present day for the purposes of my story. None of the characters depicted here are based on real people, and I took artistic license by creating fictional establishments on and near Chardon Square. Any errors in fact made to describe Ohio’s storm of the century rest solely with me.