The Blizzard Of '78.

The 19th of february 1978 saw one of the most severe weather events of my lifetime strike the village when the south of England was swept by a massive blizzard. My personal recollection of the event runs as follows.

The blizzard struck on a saturday afternoon. Snow and ice had effected the areea for most of the preceding week causing some disruption but not, at that stage, making travel impossible. As I always did in those days, I went into Exeter to meet friends on the saturday morning and went for a lunchtime drink. The morning was cold, but very overcast. Leaving the pub I went to the High Street to watch the student rag week procession. It began to snow, but the snow was wet at that stage and not settling. I went to the underground toilets situated behind St Stephen's Church and in the five minutes, or so, before I reemerged, snow was settling everywhere in large quantities. Realising that travel disruption was now almost inevitable I headed for the Paris Street bus station where it soon became obvious that large scale cancellations were then in progress. Eventually a bus was announced for Tiverton but we were informed that it would not be going up the hill to Silverton and we would have to walk from the bottom of Upexe Hill.

The journey up the Exe Valley road was an extroadinary one with all the side windows on the bus plastered in snow and the bus skidding about. Reaching the bottom of Upexe Hill a couple of people got off and began the walk up the hill in the face of an unceasing easterly gale and continuous driving snow. By the time I reached the top of the hgill I could appreciate why people lie down and die in such conditions and I arrived at my home in Coach Road with icicles hanging from my hair.

The blizzard continued into the evening, but being the hardy soul that I was back then, the adverse weather did not prevent me from wading through the snow to The New Inn. Perhaps not surprisingly, the saturday night attendance was sparse and most were huddled around the calor gas heater which was the only source of heat there at that time. Leaving the pub in the snow at closing time we attempted to push a car down Fore Street with very limited sucess. Wading back down the hill was more difficult then getting up it.

The snow had stopped by the next morning but all travel within the village, let alone beyond it, was totally impossible. That was when the village acting as a community swung into action with neighbours helping to clear each others paths, the Scouts visiting the elderly and the late Tony Baker clearing roads with the aid of his JCB.

The snow slowly cleared during the following week, but I have one other memory of this event. A couple of days after the blizzard I walked, with a friend, up the hill towards Christ Cross. turning the corner at Asg Farm we encountered a wall of snow between Nine and Twelve feet high. Climbung up the wall we found we could see right along the road to the final hill which goes to the top of Christ Cross. All along the road the snow was hedge high and in the middle of it all we could see a blue lamp and a radio ariel. Walking across the snow we found that this was all that could be seen of an Ambulance that had attempted to evacuate a patient from Silverdale to Tiverton Hospital and whose occupants had been rescued before the vehicle was buried, by a police 4x4. Sadly a photograph of this event was lost after my friend died.

That then was the blizzard of 78, those who were here at the time, are unlikely to ever forget it either as a weather phenomena, or for the way the village pulled together. Recent events, severe as they were, count as small beer beside it.