North Maple Rag

South Dakotans like to reminisce about bad weather, especially blizzards. Newspapers and stations often report on the anniversaries of big storms. Usually, the story starts "On this day, a really long time ago . . . " I realized today that I'm now old enough to remember some of the "really long time ago" events. My hometown newspaper had a story in yesterday's paper entitled, "Blizzard remembered 20 years later."

The "Arctic Hurricane of 1985" deposited 17.2 inches of snow on my town. As you know, blizzards combine a lot of snow with strong winds, so that foot and a half of snow resulted in five foot snowdrifts. It was the first time in 98 years that my hometown newspaper skipped a day of publishing, but more significantly, it's the first severe weather event I remember. Here's a visual (yeah, yeah, I know I've used this picture in a post before, but it's the only one I've got).




Huge snowdrifts are a lot of fun when you're four years old. I'm pretty sure my dad dug out a snow cave for me and I thought that was the coolest. Anyway, my town's other big blizzards were during the 1930's, 1960's, and 1971, so this is really the first time I've been able to participate in the reminiscing. I feel like I should go sit in a diner and chomp on a cigar while I bore youngsters with tales of the "Big One." Ehh, maybe I'll just go back to my homework.