The Weather Notebook: Blizzard of 1888

Blizzard of 1888
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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook.

One of the most famous blizzards in American history struck on January 12, 1888 raging across the country's midsection, from North Dakota to Texas. Within hours, the temperature dropped from seventy-four degrees to minus forty. It was a bad and memorable storm, as one survivor recalled nearly 90 years later. Curt Nickish reports.

Hazel Gass was born in 1890 on her parent's homestead in Spink County, South Dakota. Pioneers then always possessed a healthy respect for winter, and Hazel's parents instilled the same in her.

GASS: And I've heard them tell so many times about the terrible blizzard of 1888.

Hazel remembers in this 1977 recording.

GASS: And my mother said it was such a beautiful morning, the sun was shining. She called it a soft morning. And all of sudden they seen this big bank coming - cloudlike. And in no time the wind and the snow was just hurling terribly.

Hazel had older siblings in school that day. Her parents worried about them but didn't dare go out looking for them. Unlike one of their neighbors.

GASS: And all of a sudden my father heard a noise, a strike on the house or something. The building. And he opened the door to look and there was a horse's head. Of course he investigated and that was this man in the sleigh. And if he hadn't accidentally run the horses there he would've froze to death, because he was pretty near gone then.

Since the Blizzard of 1888 came up so suddenly and in the middle of the day it surprised men working in the fields and surprised children at school earning it the nickname the schoolchildren's blizzard.

In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, this is Curt Nickisch.

The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mt. Washington Observatory. It is supported by Subaru.