ELYRIA — The Great Snowstorm of 2008 didn’t quite qualify as a blizzard because the winds didn’t reach high enough speeds, but it didn’t need any fancy classification to shut down businesses, libraries and Lorain County Community College — and make most roads impassable.

About 9 to 13 inches of heavy powder coated everything by 5 p.m. Saturday, National Weather Service Meteorologist Frank Kieltyka said. The biggest snowfall reading in the county came from Oberlin, where residents experienced 13.5 inches of snow over a 24-hour period, he said.

Four-foot-tall drifts formed in some areas where wind gusts up to 34 mph stacked the snow.

And just when forecasters thought the near-whiteout conditions would break, the storm swirled around and lingered over the area. The weather service extended its winter storm warning several times because the Arctic blast lingered longer than originally expected.

“It’s never-ending. It just keeps drifting back over what you’ve already plowed. It’s impossible,” said a very tired Barry Kohler, 44, owner of Boss Services in Elyria.

At least one fatality was reported in Avon Lake of a 60-year-old man who suffered a heart attack while shoveling snow, according to media reports.

Kohler’s plow crews were pulling 24-hour shifts Saturday trying to clear driveways and parking lots across the county. He said by mid-day, the snow had broken down three of his trucks and exhausted his workers.

Even when they were up and running, keeping the plows rolling safely was a tricky task, Kohler said.

“Everybody thinks it’s easy to be out in our big trucks, but that’s not the case at all,” he said. “You can’t see very well out of the truck, your windows get fogged up, and it’s a pretty claustrophobic situation. This storm is terrible.”

The roads were so bad that the Lorain County Emergency Management Agency had to call in volunteers with 4-by-4 trucks about 10 a.m. to help get crisis workers to work around the county, Director Tom Kelley said.

“We had them taking surgeons to the hospitals and getting our 911 workers in just so we could keep everything running safely,” Kelley said.

Kelley and the county EMA later released an advisory telling county residents to avoid traveling except for emergencies.

Ohio State Highway Patrol dispatchers said state Route 2 and U.S. Route 20 were restricted to one lane in the morning and cars couldn’t go any faster than about 30 mph.

The snow was simply falling too fast and too hard to keep up, Ohio Department of Transportation spokesman Brian Stacey said.

While ODOT had its full complement of crews out on the roads, the wind pushed snow back as soon as they moved it, he said.

Even the highway patrol’s dispatchers had trouble getting in to the Elyria post to work — and once there, many found themselves stuck, the patrol said.

Vermilion police sought volunteers Saturday with 4-by-4 vehicles and snowmobiles to assist them, and a snow emergency was in effect in Erie County for most of the day before expiring at 10 p.m.

ODOT trucks and several highway patrol cruisers had the same problem throughout the day, sliding off the roads as they tried to answer calls, dispatchers said.

Despite the nasty conditions Saturday, there was only one actual crash all day, dispatcher Kevin Koney said. Two sport utility vehicles skidded through the snow around 5:30 p.m. on Lake Avenue in Elyria and collided but there were no injuries, Koney said.

“There aren’t any people at all on the roads at all — they’re completely empty. Everyone is doing the smart thing and staying home,” Koney said.

Mail carriers were one exception. The snow could not stop them from completing their appointed rounds in most areas.

There was no escaping the storm for those who wanted to leave by air. All flights were grounded for most of the day at Hopkins International Airport, a spokesman there said. The airport had 25 trucks running to keep the main runway clear but — as was the case everywhere else — the snow just fell too fast, he said.

But no matter how nasty the storm grew, it didn’t even begin to compare to the Blizzard of 1978, Kieltyka said, although this weekend’s storm produced much more snow.

That blizzard remains the worst storm in Ohio history and virtually paralyzed the state for two straight days, and kept everything in chaos for another five days, according to weather service records.

Historical reports on the service’s Web site show winds hit a steady 40 mph for hours on end during the Blizzard of 1978 and up to 82 mph at the airport in Cleveland. When the snow cleared, 51 people were dead and another 175,000 were without power.

By comparison, the current storm didn’t even make it in the top 10 worst storms the state’s ever seen, Kieltyka said.

At least no more snow — other than a chance of a flurry — is predicted by the weather service for the next several days.

Forecasters say winds should die down today and temperatures will peak in the high 20s with a slight chance of snow after 1 p.m.

Contact Jason Hawk at 329-7148 or jhawk@chroniclet.com.

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