(dramatic music) - [News anchor] The windy city of Chicago is white, as well as windy, battered by a furious winter storm which dumped two feet of snow across the Midwest.

It reduced Chicago to a toddlin' town indeed.

- The blizzard of 1967 is the most important blizzard in Chicago's history.

It is the blizzard to end all blizzards.

It's still very much alive in Chicago's consciousness, whether you were there or not, - [Narrator] Record-breaking snow was the furthest thing from anyone's mind on Tuesday, January 24th, 1967.

Unseasonably warm temperatures climbed into the mid-60s, and Chicagoans ventured outdoors.

- Oh, it's such a Chicago thing.

You know, if it gets into the 40s or 50s, there's always that guy who's outside wearing shorts and a short sleeve shirt frolicking thinking The worst of winter is over.

- January thaw, which is an actual term, it feels balmy, it feels great, and then winter comes crashing back.

Pump the brakes.

Don't rule out a cold or very snowy day.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] In a cruel twist, the temperature dropped 30 degrees in just 12 hours, and a dusting of snow was in the forecast.

- [Newscaster] WCFL weather, cloudy today with a chance of snow tonight, possibly one to two inches by tomorrow morning, - [Narrator] But nothing out of the ordinary for January, as kids set off to school and Chicagoans poured into downtown office buildings, - You have to realize the environment in which meteorologists were working at that time.

You had no computer models, you had no operational satellite imagery.

I look back on that era of meteorology and I think, how did they do what they did?

- [Narrator] As a 14-year-old boy obsessed with meteorology, Tom Skilling followed the weather report religiously.

- I'll never forget it because I watched the weather closely, and the forecast was no warnings, no watches, no indication there was anything out of the ordinary happening.

'67 was an unmitigated forecast disaster.

I mean, it really was.

- January 26th, that was a Thursday, it starts snowing.

People go to work in the morning not thinking a thing, and then it just continued to snow and snow and snow.

- [Narrator] By late morning, snow was falling at an unprecedented rate of two inches per hour.

By noon, eight inches covered the ground, crippling transportation.

- [Newscaster] The forecast has been revised now, we expect around 15 inches of snow, and I hope there's no more.

- People had gone to work that day totally unprepared for a massive snowstorm.

- A lot of the office workers that are caught downtown, it's women in skirts and their legs are exposed.

There are a mass amount of people waiting at buses, the train station, they're all right at the gates, and so you feel for them because you know everybody's trying to get home.

- [Narrator] Thousands of shell-shocked Chicagoans resorted to sleeping at work or in nearby hotels.

O'Hare, the busiest airport in the world, shut down for the first time in history.

- [Interviewer] Are you having a fun time here in the airport?

- Yeah, but it would be funner in Florida.

- [Narrator] By Friday morning, the city of Chicago was buried under two feet of snow.

36-year-old Anna Jeong, along with her husband, sister, and toddler son, had been stranded in their car overnight.

At Daybreak, they realized they needed to find a way home, and fast.

- So you gotta imagine my mother was pregnant with me, and at that time, my aunt was also pregnant, and my older brother, who's only two years old, turning blue, I mean, that's not a very optimal situation.

- [Narrator] Their car was out of gas, and walking home was out of the question.

- So from there, they decided, let's take the L. Well, of course, little did they know the real adventure was gonna begin.

(tense music) - Anna was nearing her due date.

- Lo and behold, I kind of knocked on my mom's womb and said, "I think I'd like to come out now."

My mom's water breaks.

They're saying, "Oh my God, we're having a baby."

They started putting newspaper all on the floor.

My mom's thinking, "I'm not having a baby on that."

So I'm sure that was quite a scene at that time.

- [Narrator] In some areas of the city, it was pure pandemonium.

In others, an eerie calm.

- When I got to Michigan Avenue, there was a cross-country skier, and he was polling along happy as a clam.

My first reaction was, is it always like this every winter?

We got to the television station and said, "Well how are we gonna cover this?"

We were shooting film at the time, so we had to get the film back processed and edited.

So we tried to rent every snowmobile that we could find.

- And some of the photos that we have show people walking through the city streets and trying to find their cars.

And so people are, you know, brushing off the snow and peering into the car windows if they can find a car.

It's kind of amazing to see.

- But I think the most striking images that everybody thinks of for this blizzard is all of the vehicles and the buses that are trapped on Lake Shore Drive.

- [Newscaster] Down the Lake Shore Drive, it looks impassable and impossible at the moment.

I would urge anyone that does not have to leave home to stay put.

- Imagine just shaking a snow globe.

That's what was happening.

Whiteout conditions, you can't see in front of you.

So what do you do?

I'm either gonna run out of gas, I'm gonna freeze, I gotta get out of my car and try to get home.

- [Narrator] 50,000 cars and 800 CTA buses were stuck on the roads.

Wind gusts whipped upwards of 50 miles per hour, creating continued whiteout conditions.

- Well, it's just about over with.

The overall effect of this storm was just stupendous.

The snow fell continuously for 29 hours and eight minutes.

- There had never been an apocalypse like that in winter, 23 inches of snow.

So this was like no storm we had ever seen before.

- [Narrator] The struggle was something all Chicagoans were experiencing together.

(dramatic music) - As the situation kind of unfolded, there really was kind of this sense of comradery, - And there's people pushing cars out and helping others.

Obviously, as a Chicagoan, that warms my heart, because I think that's what we should be doing is helping each other out in that type of instance.

- [Studs] Have you noticed any difference in the behavior of people?

- [Speaker] Yeah, you don't meet a stranger now.

Everybody seem to know each other now.

Just people with the same problem, how to get home.

- [Narrator] Schools were canceled for more than 1 million Chicagoland children who reveled in the magic of snow days.

- It's just like total jubilation.

I don't have to go to school today.

I can do whatever I want.

(child laughing) - It's a snow day, and off you go.

You know, grab the sled, find the nearest hill, and you're out for the whole day.

- It's always fun to wake up and have a snow day.

I wish we could have snow days as adults.

(laughs)