I’m calling out Laura Ingalls Wilder

[BlsdMama]

This seals it. I present the following evidence:

NYT story- video from rural Story County Iowa

No way did Pa need a route to reach the barn or death on the prairie would ensue. I can totally see trees at a distance. I even sent a kid out to walk the dog without a rope in the dark! And they found their way back!

[SquirrellyMama]

I live in Story County!!! As bad as it was today I made it to the mailbox and back without a rope 😁 I just want the wind to stop! 

Kelly

[Faith-manor]

We are okay in town for visibility. But, there was a nine semi-pileup on I94 in the west part of the state during daylight hours because none of the other drivers could see the overturned semi in the road. They couldn't see it. That huge vehicle in the daylight with headlights all of them traveling at reduced speeds with headlights and taillights. During the day here, two sheriff's deputies were hit by a car when the visibility was so bad that the approaching car could not see burning flares! Thankfully, that car was driving slowly and the deputies were warming themselves in their car so the injuries were minor.

While I think it is uncommon to need a rope to walk to the barn and back, I think there are probably some rare times when it is that bad.

[BlsdMama]

19 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

We are okay in town for visibility. But, there was a nine semi-pileup on I94 in the west part of the state during daylight hours because none of the other drivers could see the overturned semi in the road. They couldn't see it. That huge vehicle in the daylight with headlights all of them traveling at reduced speeds with headlights and taillights. During the day here, two sheriff's deputies were hit by a car when the visibility was so bad that the approaching car could not see burning flares! Thankfully, that car was driving slowly and the deputies were warming themselves in their car so the injuries were minor.

While I think it is uncommon to need a rope to walk to the barn and back, I think there are probably some rare times when it is that bad.

They couldn’t see it in time to stop. I totally get that! Absolutely! The road conditions are incredibly bad. But, let’s say you’rea healthy 30 year old guy with normal eyesight. Walking slowly, life dependent on it, can you find the barn?

 

Yep. Sigh. Explains why they’re in fiction. 

Edited December 24, 2022 by BlsdMama

[fraidycat]

We had a man die last winter near here when he tried to walk home from his tractor and got lost in the snowstorm. He was in his thirties.

I drove in that storm IN town where it's usually not as bad in the country because buildings break the wind, I could not see the streetlights until I was at the intersection already. Luckily, I was only going about 5 mph, so stopping at red light was doable. It had just started to barely snow about 20 minutes earlier when we left to pick DS up from work. 20 minutes later, I couldn't see a thing. I nearly sideswiped a couple parked vehicles on the way home. It was scary.

A normally 3ish minute drive took about 35 minutes and it was total whiteout the whole time.

Edited December 24, 2022 by fraidycat

[Starr]

I hate that when you get caught in a white out. While driving I’ve said on more than one occasion “Dh can you open your window and see if you can tell if we are on the road?”

[gardenmom5]

2 hours ago, Starr said:

I hate that when you get caught in a white out. While driving I’ve said on more than one occasion “Dh can you open your window and see if you can tell if we are on the road?”

we were driving over the Blue Mountains in a blizzard.  They had reflectors on the sides of the freeway - and we stuck close to a semi in front of us.  That was all we could see.  (my job was to keep very small girls - who'd been in a car for five hours - quiet.) Then the wipers froze . . .  I think dh turned off the headlights (which just reflected light off the snow making it worse), and only used parking lights.  He'd lived in a snow state for 10 years as an adult - and driven some bad conditions, that was the scariest for him.

 

 

OP - This is just one report of the "schoolhouse blizzard of 1888".  It affected a number of midwest states.  You'll note one farmer said you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.   

[Jean in Newcastle]

I don’t understand why just because you weren’t in white out conditions that you would say that they can’t happen.  .  

[popmom]

55 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I don’t understand why just because you weren’t in white out conditions that you would say that they can’t happen.  .  

The article is paywalled for me, but I assumed her comment was tongue in cheek. @BlsdMamacorrect me if I'm wrong. My humor sometimes gets taken the wrong way on the boards, so I could be totally off base here. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

10 minutes ago, popmom said:

The article is paywalled for me, but I assumed her comment was tongue in cheek. @BlsdMamacorrect me if I'm wrong. My humor sometimes gets taken the wrong way on the boards, so I could be totally off base here. 

She says that “it explains why it’s fiction “.  I don’t know, of course, if Laura’s family ever experienced white out conditions but they are not a fictional phenomenon.   We do know that she took situations that did happen to her and others and used them in her writing. Not as pure biographical writing but as a way to convey historical insight into how she and others grew up during a certain era. 

[gardenmom5]

3 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

She says that “it explains why it’s fiction “.  I don’t know, of course, if Laura’s family ever experienced white out conditions but they are not a fictional phenomenon.   We do know that she took situations that did happen to her and others and used them in her writing. Not as pure biographical writing but as a way to convey historical insight into how she and others grew up during a certain era. 

This.

235 people, many children, died in that white-out schoolhouse blizzard of 1888.  teachers roped students together so they wouldn't get separated as the attempted to get from their one room schoolhouse with an inadequate wood supply into town where they could survive the storm.   And that was just one white-out blizzard - white outs, where you need a rope so you don't get lost, are not *fiction*. 

Considering where LIW lived, she probably did experience such events.  Here is a writer who researched some of what LIW described in The Long Winter - here's an excerpt:

its drama gave me pause. This is a tale of a family near starvation, of a town crippled by lack of food when blizzards keep the supply train from reaching the settlers.

The account, told through the eyes of 13-year-old Laura, takes place in the fall of 1880 and continues through May 1881 in De Smet, S.D., during what turns out to have been one of the worst winters in U.S. history. Meteorologists have verified the accuracy of Wilder's account of the weather.

 

that's hardly "fiction".   

[gardenmom5]

This is a picture of THE PARKING LOT of the NWS in Buffalo.  There are cars mere feet away.

[MEmama]

We’ve been caught out while snowshoeing on a frozen lake in a whiteout while winter camping. The snow on land was too deep for our lab, so we navigated on the lakes instead (Boundary Waters, MN/Ontario border), using small islands for navigation. It worked great until a squall came up and we lost sight of our next island. We’d been following moose tracks and were confident the ice was safe, but knew to stay still until the squall passed and we got visibility back. It was pretty sobering.

[BlsdMama]

It was a poor call on my part. I was trying to be sarcastic/funny. I obviously failed spectacularly. Growing up in the rural Midwest, I’d heard “white out” conditions many times. It’s been a long running joke between me and my best friend that moving here was going to ruin all her Little House and Amish daydreams. 
The NYTimes article has a video of “white out” conditions… and you can still see trees. The conditions are a nightmare for anyone driving but if I were testing to walk from my house to my shed - it’s doable. I’d never heard of the Schoolhouse Blizzard. What a truly heartbreaking and awful thing. I can understand how people got lost on the prairie in those days. Open area, obscured landmarks, larger space to travel. Our joke centered around that Pa used a route to walk to his barn. Barns were generally fairly close to the home. While not as large as present day barns, they were still large enough to hold a few horses and/or cows, chickens, a pig, etc., so not tiny, generally speaking. 
My sarcasm was ill timed and misplaced. 

[Longtime Lurker]

12 hours ago, Starr said:

I hate that when you get caught in a white out. While driving I’ve said on more than one occasion “Dh can you open your window and see if you can tell if we are on the road?”

I had this exact experience yesterday while driving with DD to a very nearby pharmacy to pick up a prescription. The next thing I said to her after, "Can you open your window to see if we are still on the road?" was "Now I know why Pa needed a rope to get to the barn and back," Not kidding.

The interesting thing is that we ventured out again later to go to my parents' house and visibility was much, much better after dark. All the whiteness everywhere during the day was a problem.

[Hilltopmom]

The Children's Blizzard: A Novel https://a.co/d/bcDjVeD
 

I read this on Friday. Historical fiction but a good portrayal, I thought. Such a sad story though.

[Starr]

14 minutes ago, BlsdMama said:

It was a poor call on my part. I was trying to be sarcastic/funny. I obviously failed spectacularly. Growing up in the rural Midwest, I’d heard “white out” conditions many times. It’s been a long running joke between me and my best friend that moving here was going to ruin all her Little House and Amish daydreams. 
The NYTimes article has a video of “white out” conditions… and you can still see trees. The conditions are a nightmare for anyone driving but if I were testing to walk from my house to my shed - it’s doable. I’d never heard of the Schoolhouse Blizzard. What a truly heartbreaking and awful thing. I can understand how people got lost on the prairie in those days. Open area, obscured landmarks, larger space to travel. Our joke centered around that Pa used a route to walk to his barn. Barns were generally fairly close to the home. While not as large as present day barns, they were still large enough to hold a few horses and/or cows, chickens, a pig, etc., so not tiny, generally speaking. 
My sarcasm was ill timed and misplaced. 

I think folks just got on a different direction. Living in the north does lend itself to joking about bad weather. 

[fraidycat]

Regarding seeing trees in the video, and even the photo above where you can see greyish shapes where the cars are... in my experience, the camera picks up more than the human eye. I've taken pictures and videos of various low/no visibility weather events and the photos and videos always make it seem less bad than the real-life experience. 

[gardenmom5]

32 minutes ago, BlsdMama said:

It was a poor call on my part. I was trying to be sarcastic/funny. I obviously failed spectacularly. 

it was referring to LIW description/white-outs as fiction that I believe went too far.

23 minutes ago, Hilltopmom said:

The Children's Blizzard: A Novel https://a.co/d/bcDjVeD
 

I read this on Friday. Historical fiction but a good portrayal, I thought. Such a sad story though.

based on the blizzard of 1888 that hit the plains and covered many states.  Many children were in their one-room schoolhouses when the blizzard hit.  Some teachers chose to wait it out - and they all froze.  Other's chose to make a run for it (to the largest building in town) and tied all the children together so they wouldn't be separated.  Sometimes successfully, and sometimes not.

one teacher went even further to save her students and received 28 marriage proposals for her bravery.

Edited December 24, 2022 by gardenmom5

[EKS]

43 minutes ago, BlsdMama said:

I can understand how people got lost on the prairie in those days. Open area, obscured landmarks, larger space to travel.

Also in the woods--even without a blizzard it is easy to get turned around when you're traveling in a heavily wooded area where there is no path. 

[BlsdMama]

19 minutes ago, gardenmom5 said:

it was referring to LIW description/white-outs as fiction that I believe went too far.

Heard.  Abundantly clear. I’m sorry. 
 

And, in retrospect, I should have also known LIW sarcasm on a homeschooling board is also not amusing. 😉 

[Jean in Newcastle]

31 minutes ago, BlsdMama said:

Heard.  Abundantly clear. I’m sorry. 
 

And, in retrospect, I should have also known LIW sarcasm on a homeschooling board is also not amusing. 😉 

No, you don’t get it. None of us posting revere Laura Ingalls Wilder. We just have a broader weather experience than you do.   People are not lying about not being able to see tree or car shapes even immediately in front of them in white out conditions. I didn’t experience them when I lived in the midwest (which doesn’t meant that they can’t happen there) but I did experience them in the Japan alps. 

[gardenmom5]

1 hour ago, BlsdMama said:

Heard.  Abundantly clear. I’m sorry. 
 

And, in retrospect, I should have also known LIW sarcasm on a homeschooling board is also not amusing. 😉 

it's not the jokes about going out in the snow - it's claiming needing a rope to get between the barn and the house so the person doesn't get lost (and freeze to death) was fiction.

[pinball]

[gardenmom5]

3 hours ago, fraidycat said:

Regarding seeing trees in the video, and even the photo above where you can see greyish shapes where the cars are... in my experience, the camera picks up more than the human eye. I've taken pictures and videos of various low/no visibility weather events and the photos and videos always make it seem less bad than the real-life experience. 

I think it's because a camera grabs a moment in time - but the naked eye is looking at something constantly in motion.  You might think you saw something - but that was then because the view has changed.  . .and changed again . . . 

[Jean in Newcastle]

13 minutes ago, gardenmom5 said:

I think it's because a camera grabs a moment in time - but the naked eye is looking at something constantly in motion.  You might think you saw something - but that was then because the view has changed.  . .and changed again . . . 

And if in the confusion of a white-out you happened to be facing the wrong direction, then you could step off in a direction where there are no landmarks. 

[katilac]

6 hours ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

None of us posting revere Laura Ingalls Wilder.  

Speak for yourself, ma'am 😄

[Longtime Lurker]

9 hours ago, Longtime Lurker said:

I had this exact experience yesterday while driving with DD to a very nearby pharmacy to pick up a prescription. The next thing I said to her after, "Can you open your window to see if we are still on the road?" was "Now I know why Pa needed a rope to get to the barn and back," Not kidding.

The interesting thing is that we ventured out again later to go to my parents' house and visibility was much, much better after dark. All the whiteness everywhere during the day was a problem.

 

9 hours ago, BlsdMama said:

It was a poor call on my part. I was trying to be sarcastic/funny. I obviously failed spectacularly. Growing up in the rural Midwest, I’d heard “white out” conditions many times. It’s been a long running joke between me and my best friend that moving here was going to ruin all her Little House and Amish daydreams. 
The NYTimes article has a video of “white out” conditions… and you can still see trees. The conditions are a nightmare for anyone driving but if I were testing to walk from my house to my shed - it’s doable. I’d never heard of the Schoolhouse Blizzard. What a truly heartbreaking and awful thing. I can understand how people got lost on the prairie in those days. Open area, obscured landmarks, larger space to travel. Our joke centered around that Pa used a route to walk to his barn. Barns were generally fairly close to the home. While not as large as present day barns, they were still large enough to hold a few horses and/or cows, chickens, a pig, etc., so not tiny, generally speaking. 
My sarcasm was ill timed and misplaced. 

No worries! I only commented because I thought it was funny that I actually thought of Pa and the rope to the barn when I was out driving yesterday and then you mentioned it today. I hope you don't feel piled-on!

[katilac]

1 hour ago, Longtime Lurker said:

I hope you don't feel piled-on!

WTM, the only place where the weather is not small talk 😄

@BlsdMama you've been very gracious 

[KungFuPanda]

[shawthorne44]

My Dad grew up on a corn farm in Minnesota.   He said you sometimes really did need a rope, and climbing out the second story window.  

My early childhood was in Minnesota but 'in town.'    I seem to remember seeing snow up against the window. but never the entire window.  But then we had a forest as a neighbor and were on a bit of a hill.   Also, since we didn't have livestock we didn't NEED to go outside.  

We have goats and chickens in Texas.   It was tough keeping them in water during this hard freeze, since even boiling water would freeze in a few hours.  You end up with buckets of solid ice sitting around the kitchen floor slowly thawing.  

 

[gardenmom5]

1 hour ago, shawthorne44 said:

My Dad grew up on a corn farm in Minnesota.   He said you sometimes really did need a rope, and climbing out the second story window.  

My early childhood was in Minnesota but 'in town.'    I seem to remember seeing snow up against the window. but never the entire window.  But then we had a forest as a neighbor and were on a bit of a hill.   Also, since we didn't have livestock we didn't NEED to go outside.  

We have goats and chickens in Texas.   It was tough keeping them in water during this hard freeze, since even boiling water would freeze in a few hours.  You end up with buckets of solid ice sitting around the kitchen floor slowly thawing.  

 

My mother's cousins have cattle in MO - they had something that was in constant motion on the water that would prevent it from being still, so it couldn't freeze solid.

[Selkie]

We have a heated water tank for our horses. The heater works well with subzero temps, but not when it is also very windy. It couldn’t keep up with the 50 mph winds and -40 windchill that we had the past few days. Dh and I spent hours busting ice, and also hauled many buckets of warm water from the house to make sure the horses were drinking enough. Each horse needs to drink 5-10 gallons a day. If they don’t stay hydrated, they are at risk of impaction colic. Needless to say, we are very very relieved to be back to a relatively balmy 16 degrees with only light winds.

[Faith-manor]

32 minutes ago, gardenmom5 said:

My mother's cousins have cattle in MO - they had something that was in constant motion on the water that would prevent it from being still, so it couldn't freeze solid.

When I was a stable hand, we had these bucket warmer things that we plugged in which kept troughs and buckets from freezing. Never did we have windchills below -15 when I worked there. I have to wonder if they would have been robust enough to keep up with anything worse.

[ktgrok]

I just keep thinking, as I read of these temps/windchills/etc, "that...that is not habitable for humans."  But I'm sure a lot of y'all think the same about Florida in the summer. But man...my brain can't even begin to comprehend those temperatures. I never want to live in a place where the weather can kill me in less than an hour!

[Lady Florida.]

25 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

I just keep thinking, as I read of these temps/windchills/etc, "that...that is not habitable for humans."  But I'm sure a lot of y'all think the same about Florida in the summer. But man...my brain can't even begin to comprehend those temperatures. I never want to live in a place where the weather can kill me in less than an hour!

^^^^All of this!^^^^

[Ottakee]

1 hour ago, Selkie said:

We have a heated water tank for our horses. The heater works well with subzero temps, but not when it is also very windy. It couldn’t keep up with the 50 mph winds and -40 windchill that we had the past few days. Dh and I spent hours busting ice, and also hauled many buckets of warm water from the house to make sure the horses were drinking enough. Each horse needs to drink 5-10 gallons a day. If they don’t stay hydrated, they are at risk of impaction colic. Needless to say, we are very very relieved to be back to a relatively balmy 16 degrees with only light winds.

This is why I don’t miss having horses.   I do miss them sometimes in the summer, but winter chores can be brutal 

[Jean in Newcastle]

2 hours ago, ktgrok said:

I just keep thinking, as I read of these temps/windchills/etc, "that...that is not habitable for humans."  But I'm sure a lot of y'all think the same about Florida in the summer. But man...my brain can't even begin to comprehend those temperatures. I never want to live in a place where the weather can kill me in less than an hour!

To be fair, people can die of heat too!  Which is why I prefer a mild temperate climate. 

Edited December 26, 2022 by Jean in Newcastle
autocorrect is stoopid

[1234]

1 hour ago, ktgrok said:

I just keep thinking, as I read of these temps/windchills/etc, "that...that is not habitable for humans."  But I'm sure a lot of y'all think the same about Florida in the summer. But man...my brain can't even begin to comprehend those temperatures. I never want to live in a place where the weather can kill me in less than an hour!

See, we lived ten years in Florida and purposefully moved to the Midwest to escape the heat and enjoy the cold. None of us wanted another FL summer. Here, we spend more time outdoors year round because we just bundle up in the winter. 

[Faith-manor]

57 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

To be fair, people can die of heat too!  Which is why I prefer a mild temperate climate. 

This. In reality, I think that temperate is probably best for anyone's health.

[Selkie]

1 hour ago, Ottakee said:

This is why I don’t miss having horses.   I do miss them sometimes in the summer, but winter chores can be brutal 

99.9% of the time, I love the work and the physical and mental challenges of caring for horses. But there are always those few days a year when it’s bitterly cold or when the ground is a sheet of ice, that I wonder why I didn’t choose a warm, cozy indoors hobby instead.😄

[ktgrok]

4 hours ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

To be fair, people can die of heat too!  Which is why I prefer a mild temperate climate. 

But not nearly as quickly! Google says hypothermia can happen in 10 minutes in the temperatures people are reporting. Takes a lot longer to die of heat. 

[KungFuPanda]

My sister has frozen, busted pipes in southern Alabama.  That's insane.

[Janeway]

Realize, there were no lights out on the prairie, none. It was dark when he went out and it was pitch dark.

[Janeway]

On 12/23/2022 at 7:51 PM, BlsdMama said:

They couldn’t see it in time to stop. I totally get that! Absolutely! The road conditions are incredibly bad. But, let’s say you’rea healthy 30 year old guy with normal eyesight. Walking slowly, life dependent on it, can you find the barn?

 

Yep. Sigh. Explains why they’re in fiction. 

If you read some of the biographies and back stories on her books, you will find that she did take a fair amount of creative liberty in her stories. The snow storms of that year were awful. I am going to pull my book on that particular year off the shelf and hopefully, remember to come back and post what I found out. 

[Janeway]

There is one thing of note. In that winter, in DeSmet, there were blizzards over and over again. Rail lines were shut down for months. 

[ktgrok]

41 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:

My sister has frozen, busted pipes in southern Alabama.  That's insane.

My friend has frozen pipes in Florida!!! She's in Gainesville, near UF, and posted on Christmas Eve that their pipes froze overnight and they were without water! CRAZY. We should not have hurricanes and hard freezes in the same year - no fair!

[shawthorne44]

20 hours ago, ktgrok said:

I just keep thinking, as I read of these temps/windchills/etc, "that...that is not habitable for humans."  But I'm sure a lot of y'all think the same about Florida in the summer. But man...my brain can't even begin to comprehend those temperatures. I never want to live in a place where the weather can kill me in less than an hour!

 

Early childhood was Minnesota, since then has been Texas.  Both places, people say "I could never live there (referring to the other place)."   What I realized was that they would envision what it was like in the other place during a time of year that they normally spent outside.   So, in Minnesota they would think of July in Texas and envision themselves stuck inside.    In Texas they did the reverse.   What I realized is that what matters is the ratio of how many days of the year you might want to go outside, vs. how many days it is too miserable.  It is just in Texas the days are different (and there are many more nice days).   BTW, moving to Texas was the second best thing my parent's ever did.     

 

[stephanier.1765]

On 12/24/2022 at 9:31 PM, KungFuPanda said:

There are some fun videos of kids opening different foods on Christmas with a very Laura type response. One little girl received a case of olives and couldn't unwrap that gift fast enough. LOL Another child, a boy, was thrilled over his onion. There was one small child that received a jar of pickles and his response included the F word, so that was definitely not very Laura of him. 😂

[Jaybee]

7 minutes ago, shawthorne44 said:

BTW, moving to Texas was the second best thing my parent's ever did.     

 

So...curious minds want to know what the first best thing was?