Blizzard

   My parents commented that I was born at a time the weather was freezing cold, but I always assumed it was typical seasonal weather for mid-January.  Today I came across a page.  I’ve no idea where it came from, but it told a somewhat different story.

   The edge of the page is marked “1949”, the year I was born.  It was apparently called the Great Blizzard of ’49.  Here it is.

Possible Snow Flurries

   Nobody, not even the Weather Bureau, knew it was coming.  They reported ‘possible snow flurries.”  Whistling down from Alaska on January 2 came ‘snow flurries’ that lasted seven straight weeks. It turned out to be the worst storm in history.

   Wyoming and Colorado were hit first.  The blizzard spread like a cold white blanket over North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. It crossed the Rockies and struck Utah, Idaho and Nevada. It sent icy fingers down to sunny Arizona and New Mexico.  It spread eastward into Kansas and Oklahoma. Houses were buried to the roof as the storm raged on. Blinded by snow, cattle crowded together and died.

   By the middle of January, thousands of people were nearly without food. The strong winds blew powdery snow into cars and barns. Some livestock smothered in barns, buried under snow. Sheets of ice like iron covered feed supplies. Deer and elk, looking for food, flocked along the roads where snowplows had opened paths.

   The blizzard lasted from January 2 to February 19. On 25 of the 48 days there were big storms. The temperature dropped to 50 degrees below zero.

   Many tales of courage were told about rescue work. A bus driver named W. L. Owens saved many motorists. He found people asleep in cars and woke them up by slapping and rubbing them. On one of his rescue trips he had 96 people in a bus built for 40.

   Air Force planes dropped food, blankets and medical supplies to people and feed for animals. Radio stations told people to signal for the airplanes with lines in the snow. A single line in the snow meant a doctor was needed. Two lines called for medicine. An ‘F’ called for food.  “L” stood for fuel. And “LL” meant “we’re okay”.

   Luckily the right kind of weather followed the blizzard.  There are no floods, and the melting snow brought plenty of water for irrigation in the summer.  In the Great Blizzard of ’49, acts of human courage matched the power of nature.

   After reading this article, I realized that weather forecasting has greatly improved!  Snow plowing has improved but still is not up to the task of keeping Wyoming open in winter, and though helicopters had been invented, they were not in general use in 1949, which is why they used planes to drop emergency supplies to people.

    My parents may have understated the severity of the weather that winter.  It makes me even more impressed with my father who walked (they had no car) to downtown Lawrence, Kansas, and back to the hospital just to bring my mother the Spudnuts she loved.

   It was only 2 years later that they got to experience the Great Kansas Flood of 1951!

   The article must have come from some sort of yearbook telling events of various years.  Also included with the blizzard information came 2 more small articles as follows:

Presto!

   The Polaroid Land camera went on the market for $89.75.  This new invention produced a picture in just 60 seconds.

Television Rates Big

   When the 40s began, television was new. World War II nearly stopped the growth of American TV. Electronics factories were needed for war arms and equipment. But when the war was over, TV production took off. In 1946, the United States government lifted its wartime ban on the manufacture of new sets. Between 1949 and 1951, the number of TV sets in America jumped from one million to ten million!

Our family was not part of that ten million.  It was about 5 years later that we got our first television set.