January 26 Illinois History Minute

It’s January 26th, and on this day in 1967, a major winter storm came to Illinois. In central Illinois, it produced high wind gusts and coated trees, utility lines, and broadcasting towers with ice, causing many of them to topple. Among the casualties was one of the two towers transmitting the signal of WILL-AM, at the University of Illinois.  

In Chicago, where temperatures were colder, the winter storm brought snow, 23 inches of snow in 29 hours, the greatest snowfall recorded in Chicago in a single storm. 50-mile-per-hour wind gusts created snowdrifts as high as fifteen feet. A personal note --- I was a kid in the Chicago suburbs during what’s remembered as the “Blizzard of ‘67”, and for me, it was a fun adventure. But 60 people throughout the Chicago area died in the storm.