Some winter snow is trying to fall. I watch it out the barn door, the house windows. Big clumps of flakes fall down to melt on the ground as it’s too warm to snow.
Snow was something special when I was growing up in southern California as it was so rare or meant a trip up into the mountains. And I was young.
That white stuff loses its appeal when chores take me out tromping through it. The goats and chickens are disgusted. Extra chores of hauling water and putting out hay need doing several times a day.
I am lucky. Winter snow is in the forecast a week in advance. There’s time to prepare.
Winter Snow of 1888
New England wasn’t so lucky in 1888. This wasn’t the biggest nor the worst snowstorm. It is the best documented as I learned in “Blizzard” by Jim Murphy.
Electricity was found in the cities in 1888. Every company had its own lines so every street downtown stretched under a forest of live wires.
If you were rich, you had a nice house with coal heat. If you were poor, you might have a tenement room shared with several families or you might crawl into a coal storage room under the street.
March, 1888, saw a winter storm come across the northern states heading east and picking up moisture over Lake Michigan. A southern storm with hurricane force winds was racing up the coast picking up ocean moisture. They met up over New England on a Sunday when the Signal Corps, an army attempt to predict storms, was closed for the Sabbath. Their last prediction sent out Saturday night was for warm winter weather.
By the end of the storm hundreds of animals and people were dead. Also dead were the old attitudes about government’s role in weather forecasting and snow removal and emergency aid.
This is listed as a juvenile book, but is well worth some time to read. It is filled with personal accounts and pictures from that time. At a little over 100 pages, it is easy and short reading.
And it makes me realize how lucky I am to watch only a few flakes fall for winter snow.
