[Sca-cooks] Harvest times

Huette von Ahrens ahrenshav at yahoo.com
Fri May 12 01:47:04 PDT 2006


If so, then why were the trains not able to get in or out?  Why were there high
snow drifts?  Why did the people nearly starve and/or freeze to death?  Her
account doesn't jibe with what you are saying.  You should read her book, "The Long
Winter".

Huette

--- Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> >> If memory serves, 1881 was a relatively mild winter.  The really nasty 
> >> one
> >> was "The Big Die of '86, that essentially killed the free range cattle
> >> industry.  Some of the Worst blizzards on record are those of 1885-86 and
> >> 1886-87.
> >>
> >> Bear
> >
> > I guess that depends on where you were that year.  Laura Ingalls Wilder 
> > was in
> > De Smet South Dakota, which she wrote about in her book The Long Winter, 
> > where
> > snows and blizzards started in October 1880 and didn't stop until May 
> > 1881.
> >
> > Huette, who grew up with those books...
> 
> De Smet didn't start keeping weather records until 1889, but Yankton 
> recorded the following for 1880-81 in the Weather Service records (as lifted 
> from one of the Wilders):
> 
> Date               High        Low
> 
> Oct 80             84            15
> Nov 80            67           -5
> Dec 80            64            -19
> Jan 81             36            -32
> Feb 81            52            -23
> Mar 81           44            -8
> Apr 81            79            -3
> May 81           88             38
> 
> This doesn't say much about the number of storms or how long individual 
> patches of bad weather hung on.  BTW, the winter 0f 81-82 is one of the 
> warmest on record.
> 
> The winter of 1885-86 may be the worst on record for the plains.  It didn't 
> last as long as the winter of 80-81, but temperatures hit extreme lows (-48 
> to -70 in Montana) and left frozen cattle from Montana to Texas (it's 
> estimated 50% of the cattle on the plains died).  Curiously, the Dakotas 
> appear to have been less affected than places further west and Chicago was 
> only an average 3 degrees below normal.
> 
> Bear 
> 
> 
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