The Blizzard of March ‘66
Once upon a time in a land far, far away a blizzard descended on the small town where I lived and everything, I mean everything, ground to a halt. I grew up in Huron, smack dab in the middle of the eastern half of South Dakota, a land known as the Great Plains where flat is the geographic reality. The people of South Dakota are used to blizzards, ice storms, tornadoes, and all other sorts of unfriendly weather. But, once in a while even South Dakotans are known to wince at Mother Nature and mumble, “Holy batshit, Robin!” Early March, 1966 was one of those times.
Weather forecasts weren’t quite the same back then, no computers, no green screens, just grease pencils and maps. Dave Dedrick, the icon of Sioux Falls television was probably going out over the airways warning travelers and farmers about the storm that was headed our way. The western half of the state was being hammered, hundreds of cattle were isolated and in danger of a cold death, all of their highways were closed and the storm was headed our way.
My dad was the manager of the meat packing plant just east of town where several hundred employees worked every weekday. Dad decided to shut the plant down early and send everyone home…an unheard of event. Except for the watchman, he was the last to leave the plant, but by then the blizzard was in full force. Although the drive from the plant to home was only two or three miles, he was having great difficulty seeing and making his way on the city streets. He got out of his car about half a mile from home and walked the rest of the way. He was lucky, 18 people died and over 100,000 cattle, sheep and hogs were killed in the four day storm.
The storm is rated as one of the worst in U.S. history. Winds up to 70 mph with as much as 38 inches of snow. The flat terrain of South Dakota was no barrier to the brutal winds and snow drifts as high as 40 feet were reported. The storm ended four days after it began, about March 6. We discovered we could not get out of the house, all of our doors opened “out” and the snow had drifted to the gutters. We had to open the garage car door and literally tunnel out of the snow.
Road graders and plows were finally trying to clear the streets but only one lane was open on all but the main street of town, Dakota Avenue. The snow was so deep it wasn’t “plowable” in a normal manner. Dad was worried about his car, he wasn’t exactly sure where he’d left it. We shoveled our driveway which took most of one day and then we walked down the street where he’d been driving but found no sign of his car. There was only one “lane” of travel. We walked along and dug small chunks out of bumps in the snow drift until we hit pay dirt, one of the “bumps” was his car, a full block away from where he’d thought he’d left it. We shoveled it out and drove home.
People were digging out but very slowly. The city had to put the snow somewhere and so they created snow mountains in any available parking lot or empty lot or space. Some of those snow mountains lasted until late April.