things worse still. The moisture in the air sucks heat away faster than dry air ever could. Fog chills to the bone.
Meteorologists sometimes calculate the apparent temperature by combining the measured temperature, the wind speed, and the
humidity. This is sometimes called “relative outdoor temperature.” Most days, knowing this is no comfort whatsoever.
I wear rubber boots, cotton socks, jeans, and a light jacket. No overpants. No gloves. No fleece-lined hat. I suffer in the
midsummer cold. Clothes make the man, or, at least, clothes make the man warm.
Adolphus Greely lived to see his ninetieth birthday. He became the first American soldier to enlist as a private and retire
as a general. He commanded the erection of thousands of miles of telegraph wires, many of them in Alaska. He oversaw the relief
effort following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and he was a founding member of the National Geographic Society. For a
time, he ran the Weather Bureau, then part of the Army Signal Corps. He was in charge when the Blizzard of January 1888 swept
through middle America.
Greely’s bureau issued this prediction: “A cold wave is indicated for Dakota and Nebraska tonight and tomorrow; the snow will
drift heavily today and tomorrow in Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin.”
In places, temperatures dropped eighteen degrees in less than five minutes. In Helena, Montana, the temperature dropped from
just over forty degrees to nine below in less than five hours. In Keokuk, Iowa, it dropped fifty-five degrees in eight hours.
These temperatures do not include the windchill. They are straight temperatures, read from thermometers. Windchill temperatures
were colder than forty below.
When the blizzard was over, people found cattle frozen in place, standing as if grazing, their once hot breath now formed
into balls of ice around their heads. A government official estimated that something like 20,000 people were “overtaken and
bewildered by the storm.” Of these, about 250 died from hypothermia and complications of frostbite. The temperature dropped
too far too fast. The snow, blowing sideways, reduced visibility to what is called “zero-zero” — one can see zero feet upward
and zero feet sideways. People staggered around blindly outside. Cattle, horses, and people, unable to see but knowing they
had to seek shelter, wandered downwind. No amount of food would have helped the victims. They died from the cold alone. Because
so many of the storm’s victims were children, the blizzard became known as the School Children’s Blizzard.
Sergeant Samuel Glenn, based in Huron, South Dakota, working for Greely’s Weather Bureau, described the suddenness and severity
of the storm:
The air, for about one minute, was perfectly calm, and voices and noises on the street below appeared as though emanating
from great depths. A peculiar hush prevailed over everything. In the next minute the sky was completely overcast by a heavy
black cloud, which had in a few minutes previously hung suspended along the western and northwestern horizon, and the wind
veered to the west (by the southwest quadrant) with such violence as to render the observer’s position very unsafe. The air
was immediately filled with snow as fine as sifted flour. The wind veered to the northeast, then backed to the northwest,
in a gale which in three minutes attained a velocity of forty miles per hour. In five minutes after the wind changed the outlines
of objects fifteen feet away were not discernible.
After the blizzard, a farmer named Daniel Murphy went out to his haystack. From inside the haystack, he heard a voice. “Is
that you, Mr. Murphy?” The voice belonged to nineteen-year-old Etta Shattuck. She had staggered through the windblown snow
and, as a last and only resort, had crawled into the haystack. She stayed there just over three days without food or water.
Frostbite came on, as it always does,
Meteorologists sometimes calculate the apparent temperature by combining the measured temperature, the wind speed, and the
humidity. This is sometimes called “relative outdoor temperature.” Most days, knowing this is no comfort whatsoever.
I wear rubber boots, cotton socks, jeans, and a light jacket. No overpants. No gloves. No fleece-lined hat. I suffer in the
midsummer cold. Clothes make the man, or, at least, clothes make the man warm.
Adolphus Greely lived to see his ninetieth birthday. He became the first American soldier to enlist as a private and retire
as a general. He commanded the erection of thousands of miles of telegraph wires, many of them in Alaska. He oversaw the relief
effort following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and he was a founding member of the National Geographic Society. For a
time, he ran the Weather Bureau, then part of the Army Signal Corps. He was in charge when the Blizzard of January 1888 swept
through middle America.
Greely’s bureau issued this prediction: “A cold wave is indicated for Dakota and Nebraska tonight and tomorrow; the snow will
drift heavily today and tomorrow in Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin.”
In places, temperatures dropped eighteen degrees in less than five minutes. In Helena, Montana, the temperature dropped from
just over forty degrees to nine below in less than five hours. In Keokuk, Iowa, it dropped fifty-five degrees in eight hours.
These temperatures do not include the windchill. They are straight temperatures, read from thermometers. Windchill temperatures
were colder than forty below.
When the blizzard was over, people found cattle frozen in place, standing as if grazing, their once hot breath now formed
into balls of ice around their heads. A government official estimated that something like 20,000 people were “overtaken and
bewildered by the storm.” Of these, about 250 died from hypothermia and complications of frostbite. The temperature dropped
too far too fast. The snow, blowing sideways, reduced visibility to what is called “zero-zero” — one can see zero feet upward
and zero feet sideways. People staggered around blindly outside. Cattle, horses, and people, unable to see but knowing they
had to seek shelter, wandered downwind. No amount of food would have helped the victims. They died from the cold alone. Because
so many of the storm’s victims were children, the blizzard became known as the School Children’s Blizzard.
Sergeant Samuel Glenn, based in Huron, South Dakota, working for Greely’s Weather Bureau, described the suddenness and severity
of the storm:
The air, for about one minute, was perfectly calm, and voices and noises on the street below appeared as though emanating
from great depths. A peculiar hush prevailed over everything. In the next minute the sky was completely overcast by a heavy
black cloud, which had in a few minutes previously hung suspended along the western and northwestern horizon, and the wind
veered to the west (by the southwest quadrant) with such violence as to render the observer’s position very unsafe. The air
was immediately filled with snow as fine as sifted flour. The wind veered to the northeast, then backed to the northwest,
in a gale which in three minutes attained a velocity of forty miles per hour. In five minutes after the wind changed the outlines
of objects fifteen feet away were not discernible.
After the blizzard, a farmer named Daniel Murphy went out to his haystack. From inside the haystack, he heard a voice. “Is
that you, Mr. Murphy?” The voice belonged to nineteen-year-old Etta Shattuck. She had staggered through the windblown snow
and, as a last and only resort, had crawled into the haystack. She stayed there just over three days without food or water.
Frostbite came on, as it always does,
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