Было ужасно тихо, когда я вернулась домой и открыла первую страницу.

It was terribly quiet when I came home and opened the first page.

Breakdown of Было ужасно тихо, когда я вернулась домой и открыла первую страницу.

• я: I
• быть: to be
• открыть: to open
• и: and

Questions & Answers about Было ужасно тихо, когда я вернулась домой и открыла первую страницу.

Why is it было, not была or был?

Because this is an impersonal construction.

In Было ужасно тихо, there is no real grammatical subject. Russian often uses neuter singular past tense in this kind of sentence:

• Было холодно = It was cold
• Было темно = It was dark
• Было тихо = It was quiet

English uses a dummy subject it, but Russian usually does not.

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Why is it тихо and not an adjective like тихая?

Тихо here is not describing a noun directly. It describes the general state of the situation, so Russian uses a predicative adverb / category of state form.

Compare:

• Было тихо = It was quiet
• Комната была тихой = The room was quiet

In your sentence, the speaker is not saying that one specific noun was quiet. The whole atmosphere was quiet.

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What does ужасно mean here? Does it literally mean something horrible?

Here ужасно is an intensifier, meaning:

• terribly
• awfully
• extremely

So ужасно тихо means very / extremely quiet.

It does not necessarily mean something horrifying in a literal sense. Russian often uses words like ужасно, страшно, or жутко as intensifiers in everyday speech.

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