"The thermometer registered between zero and fifteen degrees throughout the storm... Snowdrifts as high as ten feet were reported. Visibility fell to zero, and not a single road in the county remained traversable... During one twelve-hour interval, when phones were out and roads cut, Gambier was absolutely isolated from the rest of the world.
"... the fire department instituted a convoy system. Those families without heat were often evacuated either to Gund Commons or the Alumni House. If people chose to remain in their homes, the fire department used four-wheel-drive vehicles and snowmobiles to deliver food and medicines.
"... Food supplies posed a special problem. Although the Village Market established a voluntary rationing system, it nevertheless ran out of bread and milk quickly...
"When the storm finally abated, crews of students circulated to shovel out the walks of the elderly, dig out buried cars, and uncover fire hydrants. Not until Sunday morning, however, was movement within the village again fairly normal."
—Reed Browning of the history faculty, writing in the March-April 1978 issue of the Gambier Observer, a newsletter of Harcourt Parish