The Children’s Blizzard
—Chrissie
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The morning of 12 January 1888 dawned surprisingly warm on the Great Plains of North America. “Warm” is a relative term here, as the few days before had been very cold (for example, Omaha, Nebraska’s temperature the day before was -6° F/-21° C), and this gave way to highs in the 20°s F/around -2° C. Relief from the frigid temperatures seemed the perfect opportunity for many homesteaders to get outdoor work done they’d been putting off. Children went to school without the heavy coats they would normally wear, and looked forward to recess in the sunshine. But the weather changed quickly; a blizzard had formed in the Rockies overnight and rushed across the plains, catching the entire area unawares.
The nascent National Weather Service did see the storm coming, but political motivation to downplay the potentially dangerous weather combined with an inability to quickly inform people who lived miles from their nearest neighbor in an era before telephones were commonplace. Another factor few, if any, considered at the time was the effect of the eruption of Krakatoa a few years before. This had blanketed the planet in volcanic dust, causing average temperatures to drop about 2° C around the globe. The effects of this had mostly dissipated by the beginning of 1888, making this the last gasp of the volcanic weather hiccup.
It cannot be said the people living on the American Prairie stretching from the foothills of the Rockies to the Mississippi River were not familiar with the vagaries of winter. Even new homesteaders knew the signs of an oncoming storm, but this blizzard came without the usual warning of a bruised green sky and a looming mass of clouds hanging in the west. It also came at a time it shouldn’t have, right on the heels of another large storm; usually there was at least a day and a half between blizzards. There is also not a little influence of human nature at play—having been cooped up for days, people embraced the fresh, if still quite cold, air and didn’t consider how the weather could change. And, if all of that wasn’t enough, the storm began in the Dakotas in mid-morning and hit eastern Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa in the late afternoon. And so, it was this strange convergence of circumstances that culminated in one of the deadliest winter storms in the history of the United States.
How people fared in the storm greatly depended on their location: people who were indoors when it hit generally survived, as long as they didn’t leave and had enough fuel to keep warm. Those who were out tending to livestock and dealing with other outdoor chores were caught out. Even those close to home found themselves unable to get there because the powdery snow and the fierce winds made visibility nearly zero. There are many reports of people who died steps from their front doors, and others who were lost out on the prairie because they walked past their house without knowing it. One thing homesteaders who had lived through previous such blizzards did was run ropes between their home and barns and sheds, giving them a literal guide line in conditions where they could not see even a few feet in front of them. People were also caught on trains travelling through the area, and many of them died because the trains were not insulated and did not have the means to keep passengers warm.
It is called the Children’s Blizzard, or the Schoolhouse Blizzard, because so many of those who died were children trying to get home from school. Teachers had two choices when they discovered a blizzard was coming: let the children go home or keep the children there to wait it out. If they were in a town or very near to the children’s homes, teachers were recommended to have the children leave as soon as they saw a blizzard was imminent; if they were far away, they were to keep them there. But, the schools didn’t always have enough fuel in the form of coal and/or wood to keep the place warm, and they often didn’t have any food beyond what the children and teacher brought with them for lunch. In this case, they would all have been better to stay at school. The storm hit with no warning; usually one could see a buildup of clouds that gave at least a few minutes in which one could rush home, and the front of the storm usually was not as blinding and frigid, allowing even a little more time. Most of those who stayed at school survived, cold and hungry, certainly, but alive. Many of those who left died, but some did manage to find some shelter in which to stay warm. One teacher risked the trip to her nearby home, where there was sufficient fuel and food for her class of thirteen. They tied a rope around themselves so as not to lose each other and got to her home, and survived.
The storm was a short one, ending early the next morning, but was devastating. The wind destroyed buildings, pulling the roof off of at least one school and blowing in walls of homes and businesses. The cold took farmers and their livestock by surprise, some lost entire herds of cattle they’d let out of the barn in the earlier sunny warmth. And so, even those who made it through physically unscathed found themselves in desperate economic circumstances. The overall human death toll is difficult to pin down, estimates are as few as 250 and as many as 1000. So many of the bodies of those killed were not found until weeks or months later, and many people were never found.
As a note of connection with popular culture’s understanding of this place and time, the Children’s Blizzard is often, erroneously, thought to be part of the Long Winter described by Laura Ingalls Wilder in her book of the same name. That was the winter of 1880-1881, seven years prior.