Worst Snow Storms....
Count LeChance VonShnaps
in my liftime, considering I'm only 35, I've been through some pretty bad
ones and unfortunately, I was caught out in several of them, driving.
The Famous Minnesota Blizzard of January 10-12, 1975:
This is the first one I remember, although I was only four years old,
perhaps, the reason I recall it is because it occured on my birthday and my
father (who had just divorced my mother) was supposed to pick me up, living
100 miles away. I will tell the short story as my father recalls it and add
a couple memories of my own. It was January 10th, 1975, one day before my
birthday and I remember the weather being very mild the day before. The
snow that had fallen had all but melted, which was unusual for January in
Minnesota (at least in those days). My dad was driving from Willmar
Minnesota to Minneapolis (or was supposed to) to pick me up. It was raining
when I woke up that morning and probably close to 50 degrees, perhaps 45. I
received a phone call from my dad who was 100 miles west-northwest saying
that it was sleeting very heavily and he would try to be at my house my
noon, it was around 9 am.
I went downstairs to watch cartoons for about an hour when I heard my mother
call down to me, I ran upstairs and was amazed to see large flakes of snow
falling from the sky, in just over an hour, the temperature had dropped some
20 degrees and it was snowing heavily. "It won't last," my mom said, "the
weather man said it would turn back to rain soon."
Two hours later, it was still snowing, only, the temperature had dropped
another 10 or 15 degrees and the snow was a fine mist, accompanied by
thunder, as my mom recalls, there was already several inches on the ground
and I went outside to play, excited about the snow.
In the meantime, my father was about 60 miles west, struggling his way
through an all out blizzard and hardly believing that the weather had
changed so rapidly, with little or no warning from the weather service. The
temperature, as he recalls, had dropped 25 degrees since he'd left his house
in Willmar, it was now around 15 degrees and the wind was whipping the snow
across the flat plains at about 45 MPH. At this point, he stopped to get
gas and was watching the television in the station and suddenly, the weather
service had clued into what was happening. Conditions south and west were
terrible, winds to 80 mph and roads closed shut. None the less, he
continued his ill-fated journey as the weather grew worse and worse, after
about another 30 minutes of driving, the wind had picked up to the point
that it blowing his car around and he was having difficulty controlling it
and visibility was down to just a few feet. In the course of two hours, 5
inches of snow had fallen and driving had become impassable, he was forced
to stop in the next town to seek shelter in a hotel. He was held up there
for 3 days as two feet of snow piled up but it was the wind that made it so
horrible, gusting to 80 mph at times and damaging the roof of the hotel he
was in and literally burying his car so that he couldn't see it.
In the end, 15-30 inches of snow had piled up throughout the state and there
were 25 foot drifts in some places, 35 people died and thousands of
livestock were killed. Some roads remained closed for 12 days. It is said
that this is the worst Blizzard in Minnesota history, at least, in modern
history. I recall attempting to walk next door, just a few feet away (as we
lived in a townhouse) and was unable to do so because of the wind and
blistering windchill.
Febuary 4th, 1984:
I had just finshed with outdoor hockey practice and my friends dad was
picking us up for our 45 minute trip home. We had all noticed it had gotten
much colder since we started practice 3 hours earlier, in fact, the
temperature had gone from 30 degrees at 4pm to 15 degrees at 7pm and the
wind made conditions impossible, it was simply too cold to continue
practice. As we began our trip home it started to snow, lightly at first
and then increased in intensity very rapidly, soon, there were white-out
conditions and my friends father was driving about 20 mph.
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