"I’ve had it with all this motherfucking snow on this motherfucking plain!”
Minneapolis is projected to receive as much as a foot of snow this evening, thus officially ending the period of the year in which it’s bearable to live in this state.
“Oh, but I love the snow! It makes everything so cozy and pretty!” you say obnoxiously, once again drunk on brandied egg nog, all while your extended family looks on uncomfortably, just hoping you’ll finally decide to leave and stop making a goddamn scene every Christmas.
Well, you dear sir and/or madam, are a fool.
Winter in Minnesota is not at all like those saccharine Thomas Kinkade paintings of quaint cottage houses soaked in a disturbing, unnatural glow of pastel magenta:
It is a bleak landscape of barren desolation and existential anguish—a monochromatic reminder of the inevitability of death painted directly onto the land.
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| Reality. |
It just never goes away. It never stops. And you know, the whole time, that there is no respite from the iciness that makes it difficult to walk, the filthy slush that piles up and turns your surroundings into a mass of dirty grayness, the frigid temperatures that you can literally feel freezing your lungs, and the vitamin D deficiency that sets in from lack of sunlight. Once done, winter cannot be undone for months and months.
So in honor of the coming of winter, here are some of the most memorable winter storms in Minnesota history:
The Schoolhouse Blizzard (January 12, 1888):
The most bizarre weather pattern I’ve witnessed was one week during a spring in which we went from snow on the ground to 90 degrees and back to a blizzard over the course of a week. So this storm is particularly remarkable because the temperature dropped as much as 100 degrees in one day. This blizzard, which is also known as the "Children's Blizzard," acquired its deceptively friendly name because so many of its 235 victims were children attempting to make their way home from schools who eventually died from hypothermia. The storm most strongly affected Nebraska and South Dakota, but stretched from Idaho to Minnesota. Temperatures fell as low as -28 degrees and winds were said to be so strong that people could not hear each other from even six feet away. Indeed, when one Nebraska teacher tried to lead children to their home only 90 yards away, they became so disoriented that they were lost and the children eventually died from hypothermia.
The Armistice Day Blizzard (November 11, 1940):
Like the Schoolhouse Blizzard, the Armistice Day Blizzard saw an unseasonably warm 60-degree afternoon worsen rapidly over the course of the evening and, in the end, dump as much as 27 inches on Minnesota. Because weather forecasts were comparatively rudimentary, no one was prepared for the onslaught and, as a result, many people simply abandoned their cars, the transportation system was crippled, and 49 Minnesotans died. Many of those casualties were duck hunters completely unprepared for a storm that brought freezing temperatures, 80 mph wind gusts, and snow drifts as high as 20-feet.
The Great Storm of 1975 (January 10-12, 1975):
1975 was a terrible year for Minnesota weather, not only producing this “blizzard of the century,” in January, but also the storm that caused “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” to be written (I will spare you from the wrath of Gordon Lightfoot). This was a “Panhandle Hook,” which is a relatively infrequent cyclonic storm that moves northeast from Oklahoma into the Great Lakes region, typically creating severe storms in the South and intense blizzards in the North. As a result, this one storm managed to create 45 tornadoes across the South while dumping up to 27 inches of snow, with 20 foot drifts and 90 mph wind gusts, in Minnesota. Chicago, meanwhile, merely had unseasonably warm temperatures.
The Halloween Blizzard (October 31, 1991):
The blizzard that ruined Halloween. I had a rockin' Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume on (I was Leonardo because, you know, I was thoughtful and introspective as a six-year-old), and a bag just waiting to be filled with decade-old Bazooka Joe and Sixlets. But then here comes the storm and now I have to wear a sweatshirt over my costume! Lame. Halloween was pretty much never the same. In addition to ruining Halloween with 8 inches of snow, this blizzard continued into November 2nd, dropping as much as three feet of snow across the state and closing down stretches of I-35 and I-90.
The Coldest Day Ever (February 2, 1996):
School had been canceled for most of the week because of brutally cold temperatures that hovered well under zero. But that Friday, a day when Tower, MN recorded the state record of -60 degrees, I swear to God they made us go to school because we were out of winter days. Welcome to Minnesota.
The Day I Had to Get Up at 6 AM to Shovel a Car out of 20 Inches of Snow because they Refused to Cancel School (November 24, 2003):
Seriously, what is wrong with you people? I'm still angry about that.
The First Day I Had Been in Minnesota in Four Years (March 2, 2007):
Two feet of snow to greet my triumphant return.
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1 Response to I Got Yer Winter Wonderland Right Between the Eyes...
Joe, you are a Winter Curmudgeon.
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