The Time Capsule | Roy Marshall
In mid-January we heard a TV weather-wizard say Iowa was in the middle of the “blizzard belt.” This was first I knew there was a blizzard belt and was coincidental as a couple of hours earlier I’d checked for historic events that happened on the same day and found several, including a seriously bad blizzard.
Local papers had the story, but didn’t match The Sioux City Journal, for dramatic headlines. On Jan. 17, 1888, their banners read: “Thrice Fifty Lost!” “The Horrors of the Storm Just Coming to Light!” “Death List Will Reach 200!” and “Five School Children Found Frozen to Death!”
That was a tough storm.
The word “blizzard” is one that weather people seem to love. There aren’t that many genuine blizzards, but listening to forecasters one would think otherwise. The word is said to have originated with an Iowa newspaper. In the Estherville area in the 1870s was a large German settlement. Germans used the word “blitzkrieg,” meaning “lightning-like” to describe a violent winter storm. Someone at The Estherville Vindicator converted “blitzkrieg” into “blizzard,” whether intentionally or because the reporter’s command of German was not the best we don’t know. Regardless, a word was born.
Weather people not only liked the sound, they decided to give “blizzard” a specific meaning by proclaiming that in order for a storm to qualify there must be winds of at least 35 mph, heavy blowing snow and temperatures of 20 degrees or colder for an “extended period” (whatever that is). A “severe blizzard” has 45 mph winds and temperatures of 10 degrees or colder.
Weather people had new words, definitions to go with them, then began abusing both by constantly calling things blizzards that do not meet the parameters they established. They find ways, saying “blizzard-like” or “may reach blizzard proportions.” We also hear “blizzardy,” another invented word, which is generally defined as “resembling a blizzard.”
A few Express subscribers were on hand for the storm of February, 1936, one that went well beyond the “severe blizzard” threshold. Readers from more recent generations may remember the trifecta; a triple-whammy of February and March, 1965, and the consequences that followed.
Mid-February of ‘65 brought a storm with frigid temperatures, strong winds and snowfall ranging from 6 to 10 inches. The last few days of February were warm and much of the snow melted. Frozen soil shed water and rivers filled. Flooding concerns were compounded by ice jams, and this was before March came in like a lion with a second storm.
This one started with rain; rain that caused the swollen East Nishnabotna to reach flood stage from Atlantic south. Highway 48 closed at Elliott. Shenandoah had problems, and for a time highways leading into Council Bluffs were closed by high water. Rain turned to freezing rain. Roads became ice-covered. Power and phone lines went down, trees were damaged. Then freezing rain turned to snow with some areas getting an additional 8 inches driven by 40 mph winds. Temperatures plummeted, livestock and those who worked outdoors suffered, but at least the flood threat temporarily eased. Then came the big one.
Known as the “St. Patrick’s Day blizzard,” it was worse to the north than here, with northwest and north-central Iowa being whipped by 60 mph winds and 12-14 inches of additional snow. Although southwest Iowa was on the tail end of this one, we got a share. Strong north winds drifted not just new snow, but picked up snow from the March 2, storm.
Roads clogged, and ordinary snow plows struggled; not just to move snow but to find a place to move it. That month the highway commission cleared some roads with a machine that both pushed snow and blew it (one report has the behemoth being leased from an airport, but whether true or not I don’t know).
The stage was set. Flooding and heavy snow in early March had been followed by a freeze, then an even heavier snow to the north, and all that snow and ice was waiting for a spring thaw to bring a real mess down Iowa rivers, and it did. I’m sure we have readers who were there.
January this year was cold and left a lot of snow. February and March are yet to come. We’ll hope they aren’t as “blizzardy” as they were in ‘65.
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.