Armistice Day Blizzard

Sixty-seven years ago today was what my parents and their contemporaries called the “Armistice Day Blizzard.” I can remember my father and his brother talking about the storm and they were in southern Iowa at the time. I remember hearing about it since I have been in Minnesota

where it seems that the storm was at its worst.

This blizzard seem strange because it was so early in the year. We who remember the Halloween blizzard of 1991 know that blizzards can happen earlier in the year, but this had to have been a major surprise for people across the Midwest since reports indicate that the day started out unseasonably warm.

The blizzard also seems strange because it covered so much area. From the Great Plains to the Great Lakes, Kansas to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, is a lot of area for one storm. How often have we heard of Willmar or Rochester being blanketed in frozen H₂O while we get off with no more than an inch?

I don’t know that I swallow all of the “Greatest Generation” stuff, but I know that this would be one of the things that a lot of them had to persevere.

Weather people then did not warn anybody. The Weather Bureau in Chicago did not catch it. We forecast weather a lot better now, almost so much that their ubiquity tends to make us ignore them more than we ought to sometimes. [I remember in another forum several years ago somebody referred to a summertime “WCCO Sprinkle Alert.]

But maybe just once in a while we really should be thankful that we do have better ways of detecting approaching disaster, even if we sometimes don't pay attention.