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Reflections
Blizzards proved awe-inspiring and deadly for early settlers : Reflections : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisBlizzards proved awe-inspiring and deadly for early settlers
| by Roger Matile
| 12/27/2012
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"There are no words to describe..." begins many a pioneer account of the vast Midwestern prairies.
But fortunately, the earliest arrivals did try to describe what they found as they left the wooded, mountainous East, descriptions that give us insight into the people who decided to leave all and head west.
The Yankees from New York and points farther east and north mingled with the Southerners from Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky to form what eventually became the hardy stock that built Illinois into one of the Union's most powerful agricultural and industrial states.
The settlers found prairies of vast extent, groves of greater or lesser acreage, creeks and rivers, and swamps and sloughs.
They also discovered the ferocious weather the prairies threw at them on a regular basis. Those who immigrated directly to Illinois from Europe were the most amazed-and not a little appalled-at the weather they found here.
Scotland, England and Germany, which contributed most of the earliest foreign settlers to the Fox Valley, all had climates leavened by the Atlantic Ocean's massive Gulf Stream. In Great Britain, those who decided to move across the Atlantic where land was far less expensive and much richer, heard the winters were cold with deep snow. But Britain receives its share of snow each winter, and the island is famous for its cold, damp weather so they were unfazed. But while it is cold and damp, it is not frigid. The Scots, while a hardy people, still come from a place where occasional palm trees grow in seaside gardens. They were to discover an entirely different climate when they arrived on the Illinois prairies.
The first pioneers on the prairies along the Fox River settled in the lee of the groves that peppered the rolling land, thus offering some shelter from the rambunctious winter winds. But even the Yankees from New York State and New England weren't entirely prepared for their first Illinois blizzard.
"Blizzard" is an interesting word of unknown origin. It was probably coined by European settlers, but no one knows for sure. What we do know is the weather prairie pioneers encountered when they left the dense woods of the East were an unpleasant and awe-inspiring surprise. Oh, they had their Atlantic seaboard nor'easters all right when the winds howled in off the ocean, pushing snow and sleet before them. And heavy winter snows were the norm in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
But west of the place where the forests shrink, and the last line of hazel brush marks the demarcation with the prairies, the winter storms were different. The prevailing westerlies get their start on the eastern slopes of the Rockies, and then, pushed by cold polar air masses that form over Canada and swoop down into the Lower 48, accelerate across the plains and shortgrass prairies, barely slowing when the tallgrass prairies of Iowa and Illinois are reached. Along about eastern Nebraska, the accelerating winds begin encountering warm, heavy Gulf air pushing northwards, and when the two meet, titanic forces are released creating those unique wind-blown snow events called blizzards.
The resulting winter blizzards are peculiar to the prairies. High winds and extreme cold mix with sometimes stupifyingly heavy snowfalls, high humidity, and astonishing wind chills to create winter storms that beggared the imagination of early observers. While some of them were prepared for cold weather, none of them were prepared for their first whiteout.
Some settlers were lulled by their first and even their second winter on the Illinois prairies, because even here in blizzard country the storms are not seen every year. But sooner rather than later, blizzards hit and those who were unprepared suffered for it. The onset of a prairie blizzard was often deceptive. Midwestern weather is unusually changeable, and swings of more than 100° F. over a few days time are uncommon but not unheard of.
The bad weather was't restricted to pioneer days, either. On Monday, Nov. 11, 1940-Armistice Day-one of the Midwest's fiercest blizzards struck, leaving a path of destruction and death from Nebraska through Illinois. In Iowa, the temperature was about 60° at midmorning before starting to fall. By afternoon, the blizzard was in full swing and schools were being dismissed early.
Here in Kendall County, the morning dawned clear and mild. By 10 a.m., residents were remarking about the spring-like weather. But then clouds scudded before a driving west wind, rain spattered and finally snow started falling as temperatures dropped sharply, eventually falling nearly 70° in just a few hours.
Branches and trees were knocked down in Oswego and Yorkville, blocking streets and cutting electrical service. Near Millington at the Crimmins farm, a large living room window and glass from the kitchen door were blown out, and a portable hog house was blown over a fence and demolished. In Newark, the Kendall County American Legion Post canceled their annual Armistice Day march from the Legion hall to the school.
Later that night, though, the winds calmed and the bright November moon came out. Tuesday morning dawned clear and cold, a typical prairie winter day.
But from noon Monday to noon Tuesday, 158 people had died throughout the Midwest, including 73 sailors who drowned on the Great Lakes when their ships were sunk by high winds, and 85 hunters were killed by exposure in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois (where 13 died).
This winter has been unusually mild in terms of snowfall as global climate change takes a firmer grip, distorting what used to be North America's normal weather patterns. But true Midwesterners know deep in their bones that mild winter weather is often a debt to be paid later. The only questions have been when and how much.
Interested in more local history?
Visit http://historyonthefox.wordpress.com/
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