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When I was a kid growing up near Greeley, we sometimes got a blizzard. I'd marvel at it, especially if it was of intensity sufficient to produce the joy of school closure. I'd also complain about having to do outdoor chores.
My parents would interrupt my whining with This is
nothing, compared to the Blizzard of '49.
I don't
remember it because I didn't arrive until 1950. In January
of 1949, my parents were dating in Douglas, Wyo., where my
mother was a high-school senior and my dad worked at the
laundry.
He talked about snow that was four feet on the level
with drifts up to 30 feet, and to transport linens between
the laundry and the local hospital, the National Guard
provided a weasel
-- an early, but bigger, version
of the snowmobile.
My mom has some pleasant memories. She lived in town with her little brother and her mother, who taught school. Her best friend Delores lived on a ranch out of town, and on account of the great blizzard, her friend had to stay in town with her, and they got to hang out together constantly for several weeks.
Her father spent most of his time at his two-section
ranch, 50 miles north of Douglas. The nearest paved road,
electricity, or telephone was at Bill, 17 miles away. The
blizzard caught him in town, so they didn't have to worry
about him, but when he finally got back to the ranch,
there were dead cattle, including the bull. A big loss. My
folks didn't believe in gambling, but there is nothing that
is a worse gamble than a homestead.
That storm hit in early January. But when I talk to
old-timers in Salida, they mention February, when the
Blizzard of '49
blocked the Union Pacific's main
line across southern Wyoming. Our mountains were spared the
strong wind, so traffic got re-routed to the Denver &
Rio Grande Western's Moffat Tunnel line, and much of the
Moffat traffic got re-routed to the Tennessee Pass line
through Salida, which made for some long and hard days
working on the railroad here.
This disparity in dates inspired some research (assisted
by Nancy Gauss of the Savage Library at Western State
College in Gunnison, and I thank her profusely). From an
article by Wesley Calef in the December, 1950, edition of
the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, I
learned that it is more accurate to say Blizzards of
1948-49
rather than Blizzard of 1949.
The first hard storm struck on Nov. 17, 1948. It moved
very slowly, so that what might have been an ordinary
blizzard of the Great Plains
became a fierce and
protracted storm.
Eastern Colorado and western Nebraska
and Kansas were buried. All highways were closed and
hundreds of travelers were stranded,n.
The weather cleared, they dug out, and then on Dec. 29, another storm hit. It didn't carry much snow, but the wind knocked out power and telephone lines.
On New Year's Day in 1949, the day was sunny and bright,
and meteorologists were not expecting any great
change.
However, when the storm struck [on Jan. 2],
it exceeded anything ever before recorded for the
combination of snow, wind velocity, low temperatures, and
duration.
It quickly became impossible to drive, even in town.
Every railroad in the main storm area had been
completely snowed in.
Motorists were stranded in tiny
spots where supplies were marginal -- Rockport, between
Greeley and Cheyenne, had a normal population of 3, and
more than 300 involuntary visitors. Thousands of cattle,
including my grandfather's, died on the High Plains. The
savage winds made plowing impossible for days; not until
mid-January did transportation get remotely back to
normal.
More snow, wind, and miserable cold hit the Nebraska
panhandle on Jan. 17. The next big blizzard arrived on Feb.
5 west of Laramie; not much snow, but the winds during
this period were of extraordinary velocity and
persistence,
and from Feb. 6 to 17 all
transportation lines remained closed.
So there were several blizzards of '49. Out in southeastern Colorado, they'll doubtless be talking about the blizzard of '07 for years, while the rest of us recall weekly snowstorms and a long spell of bitter cold.
Of course, around here we have joked about the need for a hard winter that would chase out some of the recent-arrival lightweights. But after several weeks of having routine chores turn into long and icy ordeals, I sometimes fear that I might be turning into one of those lightweights. But I figure it's worth holding on, since I someday want to tell tales about the brutal winter of 2007.
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