Tuesday, Nov. 12, 1940: Armistice Day blizzard
Posted on August 15th, 2005 – 7:58 PMBy Ben Welter
The forecast for Armistice Day 1940, as reported in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune dated Nov. 11, gave barely a hint of what was to come that day: “Cloudy, occasional snow, and colder, much colder.”
Many took advantage of the mild holiday weather and made plans to spend the day outdoors. Then came rain … which turned to snow, accompanied by howling wind … and more snow … and then the cold. More than 16 inches of snow fell in Minneapolis, more than 2 feet in other parts of the state. Temperatures dropped from near 60 to the single digits in less than 24 hours. Telegraph and telephone lines went down, cutting off communications and complicating the task of reporting the big story. In the end, 49 people died in the Armistice Day blizzard in Minnesota, many of them duck hunters trapped in remote bottom land along the Mississippi when the blizzard hit.
The Minneapolis Morning Tribune’s “6 A.M. Alarm Clock Edition” of Tuesday, Nov. 12, 1940, provided exhaustive coverage. Here is the lead story, followed by a few of the dozens of storm-related briefs. The photos below appeared in subsequent editions of the Tribune and the Star Journal.
N.W. STORM RAGES ON
Forecast Gives No Hint of Letup;
7 Die as Zero Wave Rides Blizzard
Motor Traffic Paralyzed;
Scores of Towns Isolated
Gale Hits Hard at Telegraph and Telephone Services — Auto Mishaps
Trap 100 Near New Brighton – Blocked Streets
Send Hundreds to Hotels
The Armistice day blizzard that virtually paralyzed transportation and crippled wire communications in Minneapolis and the northwest, roared into Tuesday with no sign of abating.
The weather bureau offered little comfort with a forecast for today of partly cloudy in the south and west parts of Minnesota, with occasional light snow in the northeast portion; Wednesday; fair and continued cold.
Snow had stopped falling at Bismarck and Grand Forks, N.D., this morning but high winds continued the blizzard conditions of Monday.
The storm, which passed through stages of rain and sleet to a blinding gale of snow, hit telegraph and telephone services hard. Most communities were isolated. Temperatures fell by the hour. At 4 a.m. it was 5 degrees above zero in Minneapolis.
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| Forty-nine people died in Minnesota in the 1940 Armistice Day storm, including these lightly dressed duck hunters. |
The full extent of casualties will not be known until communications are opened up again, but deaths of six men, three of them hunters, and one woman, were reported last night.
The dead:
Walter Strom, 1700 Hawthorne Av., Soo Line fireman, killed in wreck at Watkins.
Mrs. E.Y. Arnold, 2124 Ann Arbor St., St. Paul, traffic victim.
John C. Johnson, 55, 222 Tenth Av. N.E., died of exhaustion.
Harry S. Mason, 75, 329 South Warwick St., St. Paul, died of exhaustion.
Herbert Junneman, Wabasha, Minn., a hunter.
Theodore H. Geiger, Eau Claire, Wis., a hunter.
Thousands of persons stranded in the loop crowded downtown hotels, taking every available room, and overflowing into dining rooms and lobbies. It was the buiest night hotel men could recall.
During the storm, winds reached a velocity of 60 miles an hour, drifts piled up as high as five feet, and there was a temperature drop to sub-zero depths, Williston and Minot, N.D., and Hot Springs, S.D., reporting 10 below.
Practically every road in Minnesota was blocked early today, the state highway department reported.
Plows were kept off highways because of poor visibility, and the danger of accident, but officials said every effort would be made this morning to open up the travel lanes.
Motorists Warned
Meanwhile, they warned motorists not to venture forth unless they had specific and authentic information about road conditions. Those who had found shelter were urged to stay there until conditions improved. Plans were made to send out bulletins on the radio this morning.
Storm Causes Train Wreck
Blanketing out visibility by the storm caused a train wreck on the Soo line at Watkins, Minn., in Meeker county, west of Minneapolis. Passenger train No. 106 coming into Minneapolis from Enderlin, N.D., overran a switch signal and collided head on with a freight train. Fireman Strom on the freight train was killed and Engineer Floyd Terpening, 2408 Central Av. N.E., was seriously injured. Two other trainmen were injured.
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| Only the tops of cars are visible in this view of snowbound Excelsior Boulevard, looking west toward the Minikahda Golf Club overpass in Minneapolis. |
One woman was killed and her husband and another woman were hurt when their car apparently was thrown into the path of an oncoming truck by the strong winds near the Ramsey county line on highway No. 212. The fatality victim was Mrs. Arnold. Mr. Arnold and Mrs. Nels Chamberlain, 139 East Winnifred St., St. Paul, were taken to Mounds Park hospital. The truck was traveling about 15 miles an hour when the crash came, Mrs. Arnold being thrown out as a door of the automobile was sprung open.
Nearly 100 Marooned
Nearly 100 persons, a dozen of them cut by flying glass, were marooned near New Brighton following a mass traffic accident in which 30 or more cars piled into each other on highway No. 8.
Ramsey county deputy sheriffs, with one of them injured in the mixup, helped to get the motorists to New Brighton, while others found refuge in a farmhouse. One of the sheriff’s squad cars was almost demolished as it got caught in the crash of cars.
The jam started when an automobile collided with a White Bear-Stillwater bus. Three more cars piled into the bus, and one of them sideswiped an oncoming car in the opposite traffic lane. Within a short time two dozen other motorists, blinded by the snow, slid into the pile of disabled machines. The injured deputy, Kermit Hedman, was severely cut below the knee.
Pedestrian Collapses
Johnson collapsed while walking at University Av. N.E. and Broadway. Passersby carried him to a nearby filling station, where he died a few minutes later. Dr. A.N. Russeth, deputy coroner, said death was due to a heart attack, brought on by exhaustion.
Mason, a retired St. Paul police lieutenant, was found dead in the garage of his home. He apparently died of over-exhaustion while digging tulip bulbs to keep them from freezing. He was found by his daughter, Mrs. John W. McBride, with whom he lived.
Junneman, 38, a barber of Wabasha, Minn., drowned in the Mississippi while he was hunting with several companions. The boat was capsized by the storm. He clung to the side of the overturned craft for awhile, but became numb and exhausted and slipped into the icy water when rescuers were stalled in attempts to reach him.
The bodies of Geiger, 30, and Detra, 34, both of Eau Claire, Wis., were washed up on the shore of the Mississippi river seven miles north of Alma, Wis., last night, victims of the violent snow and windstorm. The men apparently had been hunting ducks in the vicinity.
Duck Hunters Marooned
Hundreds of Holiday duck hunters were marooned – 100 along the Mississippi river between Winona and Wabasha, and another 100 near Parkers Prairie, in addition to smaller parties in various sections. One group on an island near Winona was rescued by a government tow boat.
In Minneapolis, where the rush hour of automobile traffic late in the day packed ice into the ruts of trolley rails, street cars were practically at a standstill by nightfall. Every available plow, 17 in the Twin Cities, of which 11 were in Minneapolis, got on the job, but the fact that nearly 40 street cars were of tracks in various parts of the city served to stall the plows, too. Under the direction of Fred Bjorck, general superintendent of the Twin City Lines, an all-night fight was made to open up street car traffic.
Early today Mr. Bjorck said it appeared likely that most lines would be open to the public in time to get to work today.
Pack Ice Into Tracks
Not only did motorists pack ice into the streetcar tracks, but in some instances, motorists who got stalled on tracks locked their cars and abandoned them. Ice on trolley wires also served to handicap the service.
In the effort to open up the lines, Mr. Bjorck made arrangements to hire a number of city trucks to help the streetcar company. These, in turn, supplemented a fleet of private trucks hired by the company.
Streetcar busses were blocked as well as the street cars by the traffic jam, and by icy hills.
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| Warner’s Hardware must have had this ad on standby, ready to appear after the first big storm. It ran alongside storm coverage inside the Minneapolis Morning Tribune on Nov. 12, 1940. |
Games Called Off
The storm came on a holiday, when schools were closed. Holiday football games between prep school teams were called off, and Armistice day ceremonies, including a parade in Minneapolis, were curtailed or cancelled entirely.
In Minneapolis, the prevailing wind was 27 miles an hour from the northwest, though gusts at times reached 40 to 50 miles. By 7 p.m., the moisture brought by rain and snow measured 2.13 inches in a 24-hour period. There was a high temperature of 38 degrees at 3 a.m. yesterday and then throughout the day and the night, the mercury fell steadily.
Communications Hard Hit
The fact that telephone and telegraph service was hard hit added to the isolation of various communities of the northwest. Towns were cut off from towns and farms from farms. Scores of communities were able to grope about only within their own immediate snowbound areas and could only surmise what was going on in other places.
The storm brought special handicaps to various services.
Power company officials, fighting to restore lines, were hampered by road and street conditions, which made use of trucks and automobiles nearly impossible. It was difficult, too, because of the condition of communications, to locate fallen wires.
It was the worst November storm in years, and it was all the more demoralizing because it marked a swift turn from rain to snow, with little warning. Railroads, street car companies and other transportation agencies were caught by surprise and were not immediately prepared to muster equipment and crews. That gave the storm quite a headstart.
Then, too, because of poor visibility and the danger of accidents, snowplows were kept off the highways in many sections.
The Milwaukee railroad’s westbound transcontinental Olympian train, which left Minneapolis at 9:25 a.m., got as far as Bird Island, Minn., 98 miles west of Minneapolis, where it was tied up because broken wires interfered with the dispatching system. From their car windows, the passengers watched the drifts pile up around them.
A dozen other trains were either halted or slowed down.
5 Get Rides Home When
Ambulances Answer Calls
Fifteen persons, stymied in efforts to get rides, thought of a novel solution to their problem. They went to the General hospital receiving station to await ambulances calls which might send an ambulance to their section of town. Five rides were obtained this way.
CHIP OF WOOD HITS EYE
At the peak of the storm Claus Johnson, 57, who lives in a small cottage at Twenty-seventh avenue north and the river, was chopping wood to replenish low fuel stock. A chip hit him in the eye, perforating his eye-ball. He was in fair condition in General hospital.
Mrs. Anna Tollefson, police matron, was hostess for the night to 30 women, who, marooned in the loop, sought lodging in the matron’s quarters. An emergency kitchen was set up, and sandwiches were served to about 100 people. A number of men were given lodging in the city jail.
HOUSE IS RAZED
WHILE FIREMEN
BATTLE DRIFTS
The two-story home of Nick Smith at Nineteenth Av. S. and Sixty-sixth St. in Richfield burned to the ground last night while a Richfield fire truck was trying to reach the home. Three times the truck was blocked by stalled cars — first at Portland Av. and Sixty-sixth street, then, as it tried another route, at Cedar Av. and Seventy-eighth St., and, on its third and final unsuccessful effort to reach the blaze, at Thirty-fourth Av. S. and Seventy-eighth St. For an hour and a half, while they futilely tossed buckets of water on the blaze, Smith and his neighbors could hear the siren of the fire truck as it cruised to the vicinity.
35 Responses to "Tuesday, Nov. 12, 1940: Armistice Day blizzard"
My dad, Jim Welter, was an 18-year-old plumber roughing in a house in east Bloomington that day. He recalls a light rain and mild temperatures when he and his future business partner, John Blaylock, entered the house. When they emerged after lunch, the snow was coming down so hard they couldn’t see their truck in the driveway just a few feet from the front door. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he recalls thinking. They packed up their tools and found the truck wouldn’t start. A few hours later, dad’s future brother-in-law, worried about his safety, arrived at the job site in a delivery truck and drove them home.
I was 7&1/2 years old living in Eden Prairie (which was just farm land then) when that storm hit. School was closed for a whole week as I recall. We then lived on the north side of Bryant’s Long Lake, & couldn’t get plowed out for at least 3 days. I don’t recall, if it was following this storm, but I recall my dad driving across the lake to get out when we couldn’t get plowed out. Memories of long cold winters & the salty streets that rusted out cars is why I moved to Calif. in 1969.
I remember when that lake was known as Bryant’s Long Lake. My mom used to take us swimming there in the ’60s, warning us not to go back in the water after a picnic lunch until an hour had passed. It’s just Bryant Lake now, full of jet skis and lunker fish. I helped my brother land a 40-inch muskie there last August.
With respect to these bits of history….they’re great! Great fun to read.
On Nov 12,1940, my Mom went into labor with me and my Dad, who drove for a fuel company, carried my Mom to his White 5 ton fuel truck and away they went. He had many barriers along the way but managed to get to the hospital in time. The nurses wondered who was crazy enough on a day like this to order fuel for the hospital! I came into the world weighing in at 10 lbs plus. My Mom, a small petite woman less than 5′ tall, was delighted to make it to the hospital on time. She now resides in Montana but at 87 yrs old, still remembers that day!!
Written for my husband Gene Sweet
My uncle Clyde Detra died in that storm. He was one of the duck hunters who died. Do you have any information specific to him? I finally understand what happened to him now. I could never understand how they couldn’t get out. But now reading about the wind chills it all makes sense. LK
It wasn’t just duck hunters who suffered and perished in the Blizzard of Armistice Day, 1940. Right in downtown St. Paul my mother’s aunt almost became a victim, too.
My great aunt, Ida Rehbein (1894-1982) was a spinster careerwoman who lived and worked in St. Paul, Minnesota. She set out to walk to work that day, as she did every day of the week. She was dressed for nice, warm weather and gave no thought to snow that morning.
The temperature dropped precipitously as she walked, suddenly hugging herself against the chill. As it grew colder she felt she must persevere, it would be irresponsible not to show up for work because of the weather. She walked on and on, her mind focussed only on reaching the office, not realizing she was falling victim to hypothermia. Right, left, keep walking, right left, have to get to work . . . right left, right left. She fell into a dreamy state, right left, right left, trudging along. Growing sleepy. Right, left, right left.
A shopkeeper standing side by side with his employee, gazing out the window and marvelling at the dramatic, swift change from rain to sleet to snow, saw her staggering and reeling along, head bowed against the wind, near to falling.
He opened his door, grabbed her arm and dragged her into his shop almost unconscious and kindly revived her with blankets and coffee.
“That man saved my life,
This article brings back many memories for me about the Armistice Day Blizzard of Novembe 11, 1940. You see, I was not quite 15 years old at the time. Our family lived out on old D Street in Crystal Village. I had a Star Tribune paper route at the time, delivering papers out on D Street and roads that led off of that narrow two-lane road. We lived about 300 feet south of the Soo Rail line. That day I rode my blue-colored balloon tire bicycle into town (Robbinsdale) to pick up my newspapers. Mother was concerned for me, for by the time I left the rain had begun turning into snow. By the time I got to town the storm was raging in all tis fury. Needless to say, the truck that usually brought the newspapers out there to Robbinsdale to deposit in the galvanized shed on Broadway Avenue, never arrived. What was I to do? I knew that I couldn’t stay in that unheated shed and all the stores in town were closed because of the holiday. Then I thought of our friends, the Sipes, who lived just beyond Robbinsdale High School, where I was a student in the 9th grade. Mr. Sipe ran the Texaco gas station just down the street a very short distance, less than a block away. Leaving my bike inside the newspaper shed, I struggled through the deep snow, now up to my knees, and walking against the howling wind, I head for the Sipes’ house about half a mile away; it took me at least half an hour to reach their house. When they saw me they took me in and insisted that I stay at their place until the storm subsided and I could get back home. Well, I was there for three days. In the meantime, my parents were worried sick, not knowing at the first as to where I was. While I am aware that many of the phone lines were down, I do remember that I was eventually able to call them on the phone and let them know where I was and that I was safe. Yes, that experience has been burned deep into my mind that I will remember the rest of my life, if I live to be a hundred (I will soon have my 81st birthday.
Now, a very special request I have for you. I am in the process of preparing a final draft of my memoirs, which are entitled, “Only One Life.” I would very much like to include in the addenda at the end of my memoirs, the above article, along with pictures of the famous blizzard of November 11, 1940 and ask for your permission to do so. Also, if you have other pictures of tht storm I would appreciate bering able to include some of them as well, if you could send them to me at my email address. Thanking you for your response, I am
Sincerely yours,
Kenneth N. Steward
P.S. I gradaut ed from Robbinsdale High School in 1943
At the time of the storm my family was living in Minneapolis on 12th avenue south just down the block from the Catholic Orphanage. I, like a previous poster, was seven years old. That day, and the days immediately following, has always stood out in my memory. I particularly recall tobagganing down the streets. There is a reasonably high hill on twelfth avenue between 48th and 49th streets and with no traffic we could make it almost to the Parkway.
At least then, the orphanage had a cement retaining wall running along 47th street between llth and 12th avenues. It caused huge drifts to form and all the neighborhood kids, not the orphans, I don’t recall seeing them out, would climb along the top of the wall and jump down into the snow.
Thus, my memories are of the blizzard providing fun for the neighborhood gang, no school and lots of outdoor activities. I have no recollection of what the adults in the neighborhood were doing, but there must have been a lot of snow shoveling going on.
My wife and I left Minnesota in the late 60’s for the East Coast. I’m quite sure that Minnesota weather, epitomized by the Armistice Day Blizzard, was one of the many reasons we decided to retire in Naples, Florida rather than return to our home state.
John Snore
My mother was a rural school teacher in the New Sweden area near Nicollet Minnesota. She had to stay over night the night of the Armistce Day Blizzard with the pupils that came to school that day. In 1957, a short movie for the show Telephone Time was made in California.
They compiled several stories of teachers who stayed over night with their students in the midwest.Mom was picked by the Minnesota MEA director to include her story to the making of this film. Betty Davis played the part of my Mom. Tiger Ferrara played one of the students. Mom is almost 91 now, but she remembers every minute of the storm and taking care of the students over night. I sat her down a year ago and had her tell it again and I wrote it all down. She and her students were lucky. They made it through the night with a coal stove in the basement. So they were able to keep fairly warm up in the school room.
My Mom has told me about the Armistice Day Blizzard but from a different perspective. She lived on a remote farm in Martin County (Southern Minnesota) and their whole family was just as surprised and snowed in as the city dwellers. She has mentioned that the drifts were as deep as the telephone poles were tall (even though they were shorter in those days) and they walked on top of the drifts when the wind finally died down. There were many harrowing tales of survival and hardship from her too. It certainly stands out in family stories.
That day is stamped on my memory! I was five years old, my brother six. We were in south Minneapolis near Lake Harriet visiting overnight with my aunt and uncle. That morning Uncle George was to deliver us back home in St. Paul, near Merriam Park. His auto never made it - we had to abandon it somewhere on Lake Street and waited with many, many others in a drugstore entryway - waiting, of all things, for a streetcar. So many adults in the stores, the streets! Yes, we finally did manage to get on a streetcar that was so crowded I wonder now how it was possible. How could it have kept on going as far as it did; the tracks must have been covered over and over with blowing snow. No breathing room inside. Packed like sardines. Uncle kept fast to our little hands. The streetcar made it over the Lake Street bridge and up Marshall till about Fairview I guess. Being so young I didn’t piece this together until adulthood. Then I remember everybody and everything was snowbound. A white out and cold wind. Uncle took us each by a hand, and we walked about must have been at least one mile to our home. It must have been nice weather before that as I recall neither my brother nor I had mittens or boots! Of course the adults didn’t expect we’d be out in a blizzard only delivered back home via car. I remember Uncle buttoning us up as best he could and holding our hands, one kid on each side - the other hand in our pocket. During that walk through the storm he told us little funny stories and at one point, sang some songs. We made it, and yes, the folks at home were frantic with not knowing. Years later I asked my Aunt what Uncle did after he left us back at home. “Why, he went to work”, she told me,”yes, making his way back to downtown Minneapolis. He felt he had to considering the emergency.” This uncle was George E. Guise, City Desk Editor of the Minneapolis Star/Tribune! (He died in 1953, and we kids never had a chance to thank him for his fortitude!)
Gunner Miller, of Lewiston, talked to our scout troop after the storm. He and three other duck hunters were marooned on an island near Winona. They got a fire started with a shotgun blast into gasoine on wood. They kept each other awake all night. In the AM about 60 ft.=/- they found two men frozen to death under a small boat. The howl of the wind kept them from hearing each other.
Watkins, Minn. is the small town west of Mpls. where two trains collided in the blizzard. My late parents who resided there most of their lives talked about this blizzard for many years. I don’t recall many details of the stories. Although an older sister was born on November 16th, five days following the blizzard. The mostly predominate Catholic population were farmers by trade. Does anyone know how the farmers faired during this storm? Thanks for all of the personal stories from folks who lived through the experience. Thanks for taking the time to share your history.
I was 12 & Dad had a meeting in Minneapolis. Since I was out of school Mom & I went along & went shopping. It was sunny & warm so we had no clothes for the storm that hit on the way home. Dad worked for Queen Stove Works that was on the north side of Albert Lea at that time. We had to walk from our blocked car on 65 about 2 miles to get to his office. Thank goodness some of the employees had left boots & coats so we bundled up & walked around Fountain Lake to our home. Power was out, schools were closed, we burned everything we didn’t really need in the fireplace but it was a truly bonding family time.
I was due to be born on Nov. 8, 1940. I still hadn’t arrived by the 11th so neighbors helped my Dad shovel the alley in NE Minneapolis every few hours so that they could go to the hospital if necessary. For the convenience of all, I didn’t arrive until the 19th. After hearing this story many times, some of my friends still think I was born on the 11th in the middle of THE STORM. I’ve been through many big storms since, in MN, NJ, and IL. Unlike other responders we chose to retire first back to MN and more recently to Maine.
I can remember my mother telling stories about the train wreck that her dad, Benjamin Haskell was involved in as a crew member on a Soo Line train on November 11, 1940. My grandfather’s hip was shattered and he walked with a severe limp until the day he died. He went on to become a fireman and then an engineer on the historic engine 2719 which is the only remaining engine of it’s kind remaining. It is currently in the railroad museum in Duluth and will be returning to service on excursions in the fall of 2007.
My Dad’s cousins, John and Charlie Garrison froze to death in the storm. They were delivering oyster shells with their Dads truck south of Sauk Center when the truck got stuck. They tried to walk to safety but the younger brother became exhauted, His brother carried him several feet before he stepped into a post hole and broke his leg. When they found the brothers the older brother was on top of the younger brother with his arms around him as if he was still carrying him. They are burried in the cemetary in Cushing MN.
This site is new to me and having just noted my cousin Linda Detra Kavanagh’s entry I would like to make a correction. My father (Clyde Detra and his friend Geiger) were not washed ashore but had made it to shore and died later that night. According to the sheriff’s report Clyde Detra died leaning up against a tree for rest. His companion was found on shore with his dog (deceased).
This was fascinating reading. I recommend a book called “All Hell Broke Loose” compiled by William Hull. He collected over 500 stories about this storm and put some of them in this book. He admitted that he had to edit out sixty percent of all the stories he’d collected in order to restrict the physical size of the book. I sure wish someone would find that sixty percent and put them in another book.
On a peninsula south of Winona, I awakened to the pitter-patter of rain on the roof of Bill Gurney’s hunting shack. My father and his friend turned over and went back to sleep but as a 12-year-old, I was ready to hunt. I walked through the woods for an hour getting wet and working up a sweat as it was quite warm. Later, the three of us got into our duck boats and rowed northwest into a Mississippi backwater for a hunt. No rain now but the skies were cloudy. About noon it looked like the weather was clearing with some blue sky showing. The ducks were flocking into our decoys now and the shooting was terrific. Then, all of a sudden, the wind came out of the northwest and the temperature dropped like a stone. A flock of bluebills came over me and I found my gun was frozen up! With my wet coat and gloves, I was starting to get cold too. Looking across the open water a block away another hunter was trying to pick up his decoys. He couldn’t buck the wind. Our decoys were shallow and my dad picked them up and we started for shore. Fortunately we were going exactly with the wind. I used an oar as a rudder and merely steered the boat the half-mile to our landing. By the time we got there it was dark and only 2pm! I suffered frostbite to the cheeks and hands but fared far better than most. I always wondered about the man I saw trying to retrieve his decoys. The last I saw he had abandoned them and was rowing against the wind with little progress. My father loaded the boats on the trailer and we drove back to the shack to thaw out. We built a huge fire in the fireplace and within an hour several hunters had joined us. Later, two of the hunters took a motorboat to an island in the main river to rescue a hunter there. He had been firing his gun to get attention. Then we made a mistake and tried to drive back to our home in Mankato. After 6 miles we gave up as you couldn’t see the road. That night we were lucky to get beds on the second floor over the only bar in town. Late the next morning we braved the drifts and started out.
I have pictures of my grandfather, Clarence T. Gustafson atop the snow drifts-level with the top the utility poles. He was a utility worker for NSP and was out repairing lines after the storm. I knew little about the storm until reading these excerpts, thank you all for sharing and shedding some light on some old photos I’ve inherited.
I can’t add your post to Digg. How I do this?
Sorry, Moby. Can’t Digg StarTribune.com blog posts yet. I’ll put in a request to the tech folks here to see where that lies on the priority list.
12 days after this Storm of the Century in 1940 my parents were married.
I’m happy to say they’re still at it now living in Stillwater. Mom still worries about her kids ages 58 to 65.
My father, Clifford Lofdahl, was working as a machinist on the ground floor of the Honeywell Fourth Avenue plant in Minneapolis. He said that first the sign on the Sears building on Lake Street was obscured by the snow; then he couldn’t see his car in the parking lot across (four-lane) Fourth Avenue; finally, he couldn’t see Fourth Avenue! He made it home successfully by following the streetcar tracks (evidently a plow had made some effort early in the blizzard to clear the streetcar tracks). When I asked him if he’d left work early, he said that the economy was still emerging from the Depression, and workers just didn’t leave work early for a trivial reason like a blizzard! (What a difference from today’s employees!)
My mother Leona managed a bar called “The Oaks” on Lake Street, and said that she only had to walk a block home to the house where she was renting a room, so she didn’t have a comparable “Armistice Day Blizzard” story.
The day of the storm, I was living in Orr, Minnesota (50 miles south of Canada.) Even there the weather began warm, but soon changed. My dad was a St. Louis County deputy sheriff. He had to search for marooned hunters, some of whom were dead.
I was attending my last year of high school in Virginia, MN. I hitched a ride with the Troy Laundry truck from Virginia. We got as far as Cook, just 18 miles and could go no further. He holed up in a room above Ardin’s Cafe. I went to my Uncle Herman and Aunt Leona’s home to stay. It was late the next day before we could go on to Virginia, 29 miles away. He took me to the home where I lived. The next morning I was late for school because of the snow.
[…] The photos above are from the Minnesota Historical Society’s digital archives. See all 37 Armistice Day Blizzard photos here. MPR did a story on the storm back in 2000 titled The winds of hell. The Strib’s old news featured it in 2005. The storm is rated #2 by the Minnesota State Climatology Office Top five weather events of the 20th century. And Maggie Lee wrote about the storm in a Northfield News column 2004. […]
Note: I remember my dad telling this story years ago. Recently when I read about the “Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940”, I asked my parents to tell me what they remembered. The story is as relayed to me by my parents Dale and Beverly McGannon, and written by Tim McGannon.
The weather that morning was warm and sunny. Dale’s father (Ed McGannon) went to Sisseton for a cattle sale and his mother (Josie McGannon) along with cousins Jerry, Johnny and Mable Long packed up Josie’s three kids Bud, Dale and Loretta to go to Brown’s Valley, Minnesota for the day. They all travelled the 10 miles from the farm to Brown’s Valley in an “Overland” car.
On the way home, the weather had turned very cold and the snow began to fall. Jerry Long was driving the car and stopped along the way to help two women who were stalled. Before they were able to get the women going, Jerry had slid into the ditch with the car and stalled himself. Jerry got mad and threw the crank used to start the car into the windshield breaking the glass. The car was facing North in the ditch and the car began to fill with snow.
They estimate they were two to three miles from their farm at the time, which put them close to the Sanden farm. One of the other women decided to follow the fence line all the way to the Sanden’s house. Visibility was now about zero. The woman made it to Sanden’s and a short time later Sanden came out in his car to where the others were stalled. Sanden now got stalled making three cars (and nine persons) stranded in the roadway.
Mr. Sanden carried Dale (who was 12 years old), and the other adults and older children carried Loretta (the youngest) and walked back to the Sanden Farm where they waited out the storm. The Blizzard was by now raging and visibility was nearly zero. Once back at Sanden’s farm, they poured kerosene over Dales hands and feet in an attempt to thaw them out.
When they got back to the farm the next day, Edward was not back from Sisseton. As it turned out, he spent the night in Sisseton and did not attempt the trip back.
Dale remembers the wind forcing snow to come in through the window sills and remembers all huddling around the stove trying to get warm.
Dale suffered severe frostbite and for many years afterward his hands and feet would peel at the first sign of cold.
Today, in a time of cellular and wireless, it is good to remember that there was a time when not even telephones were common. Weather prediction was not 24/7 and even a ride to town could be life changing.
Posted by: Tim McGannon - Nov 30, 2007 10:58 AM
Does anybody know anything about a Deputy Coroner Dr. A.N. Russeth who was working for the county (not sure what county) coroner during the time period of the 1940 Armistance Day Blizzard?
I’m pretty sure he served in the Navy as a doctor during the War.
I was born in the early morning hours of Nov. 12, 1940 in a farmhouse in rural Anoka County. All my life I have heard family accounts of this event, but all of these articles and comments are a goldmine of info. for me! Thank you!!!
I have pictures of the train wreck at Watkins on 11/11/1940 If any one would like to get reprints
I wasn’t even born in 1940, but I remember the blizzard. We moved to Minneapolis around 1948, and for years growing up I heard people talk about it: “You think this is a blizzard? Now, that Armistice Day storm back in ‘40, THAT was a blizzard!”–that sort of thing.
We were dismissed from school in Elk River, MN and told to go right home. I was 10 yrs. and like most kids I stopped to play and talk to friends. I had about a mile to walk and didn’t even know I was lost but just kept trudging through the snow when a man found me and told me I was heading up #169 out of town. He took me to my Dad’s garage, Flaherty Bros. and I waited out the storm at the garage with stranded travelers. We were fed from the restaurant right next door and I had a wonderful time unaware I nearly died.
I was with my parents in Sleepy Eye and we left with three nurses who needed a ride back to Minneapolis. We drove 9 miles and went into the ditch and after several hours were rescued by a farmer who took us on his tractor back to his house where we stayed for 3 days. We lived on apples and breakfast food as he had little food in the small home he lived in with his mother. Little did I know how dangerous it could have been for all of us. When my father left the car…he had my mother run the motor every 20 minutes for 5 minutes so we could use the car heater. He also had two blankets in the trunk as he traveled alot for his work. I thought it was an adventure…little did I know. I was 5 years old.
