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Sudden Change
Tue Mar 08, 2005
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Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. In the early settlement days, Illinois frontiersmen referred to cold frontal passage as "Sudden Change" weather.
One remarkable sudden change, which occurred just before the 1836 Winter Solstice, was felt from Minnesota and Kansas across to Ohio, but stamped its greatest mark on Illinois.
Reconstructing conditions from the few available weather observations, December 20 likely dawned with a Colorado low entering southwestern Wisconsin and then taking a sharp turn due north. In its wake, a powerful, southbound cold front bulged eastward, like a great bow strung across Iowa and Illinois, preparing to let loose.
John Moses recalled watching a heavy black cloud advance from the northwest on hurricane-force winds. A deep, bellowing accompanied an icy blast that froze the landscape with its passing. Water in roadway puddles hardened in waves, sharp-edged and pointed. Wagon wheels ceased to roll, as slushy ground hardened like cement.
Moses reported ice in streams thickened to between six inches and a foot in a few hours. A thermometer in nearby Augusta plummeted 40 Fahrenheit degrees in 8 hours, reaching zero by midday.
Recollections of other central Illinois residents during the Sudden Change described chickens and ducks frozen in the mud before they could move. The temperature drop was so severe, a gaggle of playing geese had the points of their wings frozen in the ice. Horsemen reportedly froze to their saddles; others caught on the open prairies, and even in barnyards, died from the cold.
Funding for The Weather Notebook comes through generous grants from The National Science Foundation, and Subaru of America.
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