‘We were being clobbered’: A look back at the infamous blizzard that blanketed Winnipeg 60 years ago

Former CKY DJ Chuck McCoy recalls where he was on March 4, 1966, when a historic blizzard buried Winnipeg and southern Manitoba.

Sixty years ago, a 19-year-old Chuck McCoy clocked in for his overnight radio show on Winnipeg’s CKY-FM.

It was his first radio gig.

He was then DJing the coveted midnight to seven a.m. show under the name Merv Clark, playing top 40 hits of the day, be it Petula Clark or Herman’s Hermits.

As the night went on, the phone started to ring.

“I was getting phone calls from people saying, ‘You know, there’s a lot of snow falling out there. Maybe you should update your weather forecast,’” he recalled.

After the calls continued, he walked outside of the Main Street radio station to see for himself what all the fuss was about.

He was met with massive heaps of snow, the bulk of which had fallen in the two hours since his shift began.

It didn’t show signs of letting up, either.

“The snow was just falling and piling up and piling up.”

Not sure what else to do, McCoy went back inside and kept on playing music, telling anyone inquiring about how long the snow would last to request a song instead of a forecast.

‘We were being clobbered’

As it turns out, that was the beginning of Winnipeg’s now storied 1966 blizzard that buried the city in 13 inches of snow, bringing it to an essential standstill.

Meteorologist Larry Romaniuk was working at Transport Canada at the time.

In the days leading up to the storm, he knew an approaching Colorado low brewing in the southern United States was sure to bring snow to the city, a few inches at least.

Of course, the weather technology at his disposal back in 1966 was a bit more analogue.

“We had no satellites to speak of. The radar we had in those days was the Winnipeg airport’s air traffic control radar, which wasn’t really set up too well for weather,” he recalled.

“There weren’t as many weather-observing stations on the ground.”

As he finished his shift at the airport at midnight, a few inches of snow were already on the ground, and it was only intensifying.

Turns out, the low had stalled over South Dakota, sucking up plenty of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.

A band of thunderstorms also developed near the U.S. border.

“That was the big kicker,” Romaniuk, now 90, recalled.

“That’s what caused the heaviest snow because of that stalling, so of course, we were being clobbered.”

A snowy night to remember, 60 years later

Romaniuk was able to make it home before the worst of it set in, though his colleagues got stranded at the airport as the blizzard enveloped the city in the hours to come.

Over at CKY-FM, the hours went on, the snow continued to fall, and McCoy’s shift neared its end.

However, the morning show team, led by broadcast legend Jack Wells, didn’t show up. The snow had similarly stranded the station’s star radio team at home.

McCoy just kept playing the hits for hours and hours on end.

“I’m a teenager. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he told CTV News.

“We didn’t give any weather information. We didn’t do anything that we’re supposed to do, because we’ve never been on the air in the day, never delivered news, so we took the opportunity to play The Beatles and The Rolling Stones while the city was getting buried in snow.”

A fresh team arrived at 3 p.m. to relieve McCoy and the rest of the overnight staff, a mere 15 hours into their shift.

But much like the rest of the city, the snow had stranded them, so they were put up in a nearby hotel.

As it turned out, sleep was the last thing on McCoy’s mind, as he was still buzzing from his primetime debut.

“It was a big opportunity and a big chance to be on the radio in the daytime. We didn’t get tired. We probably stayed up all night the next night,” he said.

Decades later, Romaniuk counts the blizzard of ’66 as one of the most notable meteorological events of his decades-long career.

“There have been some memorable times, but most of the time, fortunately, it was a very quiet, day-to-day kind of line of work,” he said.

McCoy’s radio career took him off the night shift and to stations across Canada. He received a lifetime achievement award at the Canadian Music Industry Awards in 2009 and was inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame.

Now retired, McCoy will never forget that infamous night that snowed the way for his morning radio debut.

“Memories fade, but that night stays vivid in my memory all these 60 years later.”