# 49 duck hunters perished today ....



## h2ofwlr (Feb 6, 2004)

...and tomorrow in MN and WI (49 in each state) during the Armistice Day blizzard of 1940 in the upper Midwest. Many were duck hunters in MN and WI.

My Dad and GPa lived through this storm. 
They had headed out in the Model A Ford with 1 boat on top and 1 on the right side of of those big fenders and headed to Lake Washington in Carver county from Chaska MN, (in same county) An 1 hr drive. When they left, it just started to snow a bit, by the time they got there there was already over 4" of snow and drifting and it had been snowing for over an 2 hours there as the storm approached from the west. They thought it best to head back home, it look 6 hrs time, and had to hand shovel through numerous drifts when they got stuck to get through on the roads and helping others too along the way. They were some of the lvery ucky ones. It was white out conditions at the height of the storm. The others guys at the lake that were staying at the farm were stranded at the farm (they generally stayed in the barn) for 5 days before a snow plow finally traveled the county road by the farm. Many farms it was weeks before the roads opened up west of there.

A brief description of the storm- 
The Armistice Day Blizzard took place in the United States on November 11 (A legal holiday in the United States; formerly called Armistice Day but now called Veterans' Day since 1954) and 12 November, 1940.

Mild weather ahead of an intense low pressure system tracking from Kansas to western Wisconsin was quickly followed by a raging blizzard. Many people were caught off-guard by the severity of the storm and particularly the plunging temperatures. *Sixty degree temperatures during the morning of November 11 were followed by single-digit readings by the morning of November 12. *These very cold temperatures and snow amounts were very unusual for this early in the season. Up to 26 inches of snow fell in Minnesota, *while winds of 50 to 80 mph and heavy snows were common over parts of the states of Wisconsin, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa and Michigan.* These winds were responsible for whipping up 20 foot drifts. A total of *162 deaths *were blamed on the storm, most of which were duck hunters along the Mississippi River. 49 dead in MN another 49 in WI and 59 dead sailors on Lake Michigan. The rest were in IA.









Photos courtesy Mn Historical Society

Excelsior Boulevard, west of Minneapolis after the Armistice Day Storm

The picture was in a still rather protected area where woods abounded yet. It was MUCH worse out in the prairies west of there.

This stretch of road kept drifting in all winter long. As with many other roads. After that, how roads were built had drastic engineering changes, they were piked up above the surrounding land so they did not dirift in. Most all modern roads in the northern plains are now build at least 4' above the land around it.









2 dead hunters of the many that died, of those that survived, many had severe frost bite.

For a much more descriptive artical and few more pics and radio broadcasts click this link 
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/f ... lizzard-m/

The weather with a few statistics--look at how the temp dropped so fast. 
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/arx/events/armistice.php

Video clip about WI 
http://www.wisconsinstories.org/2001sea ... video.html

About MI 
http://www.carferries.com/armistice/

A great story on it



















One last thing to consider is this. They did not have the newfangled clothing and boots like we have today. They had cotton and wool clothing only and basic rubber boots. And it started as rain and then went to snow. A bad combination, especially with cotton. Food for thought, even with today's gear, and a storm like this hit, how prepared are you? Do you think you could survive if stranded? I wonder, as today many are not nearly as hardy nor outdoors savvy as the folks were back then. Hmmmm.........


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## 4CurlRedleg (Aug 31, 2003)

No, certainly not as hardy or saavy. But with the technology at our disposal we should see a storm of that magnitude coming well in advance to either prepare or abort the mission.


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## ztrain (Jul 26, 2006)

4CurlRedleg said:


> No, certainly not as hardy or saavy. But with the technology at our disposal we should see a storm of that magnitude coming well in advance to either prepare or abort the mission.


Winter storms do not act like hurricanes. I believe if would of hit today there would be more deaths. How quick we can forget about Katrina.


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## Turner (Oct 7, 2005)

Blizzards pack wallop

Blizzards are just as savage - and even more frequent - than tornadoes here.

One of the worst blizzards struck March 15, 1941. It started in Pembina, N.D., and reached Fargo about two hours later, bringing just an inch of snow but 75 mph winds. It killed 39 people in North Dakota and 29 in Minnesota.

Another late-winter storm hit the Dakotas and Minnesota March 2, 1966. It carried up to 100 mph winds and dumped as much as 35 inches of snow in parts of the area. Thirteen inches fell in Fargo-Moorhead.

Cities became ghost towns as drifts up to 20 feet deep and swirling, blinding snow closed schools and businesses. The snow buried cars, trains, trees and even buildings in its path and stranded hundreds of travelers.

"It just raged," recalled John Bye, archivist at the Institute for Regional Studies at North Dakota State University. Bye, a high school senior in 1966, spent the blizzard on his family's Hatton, N.D., farm.

"You'd look out the windows, and you just didn't see anything," he said.

By the time the storm ended three days later, 20 people and more than 122,000 head of livestock were dead.

A blizzard nine years later is memorable, not for snow but for the tremendous amount of topsoil whipped around by high wind. That storm, known as the "Black Blizzard" of January 1975, claimed the lives of 16 Minnesotans, 12 North Dakotans, eight South Dakotans and 18,500 cattle.

Another deadly blizzard bombarded the region Feb. 4, 1984. It killed 20 people, including a 50-year-old Fargo man, his 13-year-old son and two of his son's friends. They died of carbon monoxide poisoning after the man's car became stuck on Fargo's 19th Avenue North and the storm buried the vehicle in 4 to 6 feet of snow.

Of course, not all blizzards kill, but they sure can pile up snow. The Fargo-Moorhead area won't soon forget the winter of 1996-97, when a record 117 inches fell. That topped the previous record by more than 2 feet.


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## R y a n (Apr 4, 2005)

Some pictures from the 1966 blizzard in ND...

March 4, 1966 -

the worst blizzard on record in terms of duration blasted the northern Plains from the 2nd to the 5th. Broken Bow, Nebraska recorded wind gusts in excess of 100 mph with snow drifts to 40 feet. Bismarck, North Dakota had near zero visibility for 42 consecutive hours and had 22.4 inches of snow to set a new single storm snowfall record. 35 inches fell at Mobridge, South Dakota. 13 people died as a result of the blizzard and livestock losses were heavy.



























A cow frozen dead where it stood.

The Great Blizzard of '66 would give youngsters something awesome to tell their grandchildren. Nearly 40 years have passed since the event, but it still hasn't been topped yet in terms of memories.

-----
SuperStorm of '66

There has always been a debate whether the 1966 event should be described as either a blizzard or snowstorm. Temperatures never dropped below zero, which some consider a prime requirement to justify the name "blizzard". Others claim its intensity earned it the blizzard moniker.

Wednesday, March 2, 1966 started off with a gentle breeze and many people started off the day enjoying some fine weather as there was little snow on the ground and temperatures had been fairly mild the previous few days. This all came to a rapid halt as what is probably the worst blizzard of the 20th century in North Dakota was about to hit the area.

For four days the storm ravaged the northern plains, Fargo/Moorhead picked up around 15 inches of snow, but not far to the west in eastern and especially northeastern North Dakota two to three feet of snow would fall over the course of four days. The wind gusted to 70 mph (over 100 mph in Nebraska) and created drifts of 30 to 40 feet over the area. *Bismarck reported 42 straight hours of ZERO visibility*, that is almost two straight days of zero visibility.

One aspect of that winter that made the storm particularly shocking is that the winter had been cold and dry to that point. January of 1966 was extremely cold, with 30 out of 31 nights below zero. However, despite the cold, snow was light that winter. Despite the steady cold, there was only 2-3 inches of snow on the ground most of the winter. Also, right after the storm, the spring arrived with warm temperatures and a rapid snow melt that caused extensive flooding in the Red River Valley north of Grand Forks.

Thirteen people lost their lives in that storm and livestock losses were extremely high. It took days, in some instances a couple of weeks to dig out some parts of the area. No storm since has come close to the magnitude of what could be described as a super storm. The rest of the month the weather was quite nice and mild (with the exception of a few days after the snow was over), so by the end of March the snow was gone and life returned to normal, but for anyone old enough to remember, those four days in March will never be forgotten.

• The storm probably is best known for its 30-foot-high snowdrifts. An example would be the former Northern Pacific Railway's passenger train, the North Coast Limited, which became stuck in such a drift northwest of Glen Ullin. There were 131 passengers and crew aboard. It remained stranded for several days, and grocery store shelves were cleaned out to feed the influx. While the NP sent its trains into the fury of the storm, the former Great Northern Railway wisely halted its trains in terminals. Trains also were used for humanitarian efforts, such as the former GN's Western Star, which made an emergency stop in Sabin, Minn., to take an ill youth to Moorhead where an appendectomy was performed.

• This was the storm where the snowmobile proved its worth. Also known as a snow cat or a power toboggan in Canada, they were used to rescue stranded motorists, bring medicine and medical supplies to the ill, food and fuel to the housebound and get people to work at hospitals and nursing homes.

• The atrocious weather prevented the Grand Forks Herald from being published for the first time in its history on Friday, March 4. It's wasn't published the next day either. The late Jack Hagerty, Herald editor, commented that copies of Thursday's March 3 edition were still sitting in the Herald mailroom, waiting to be delivered, so there wasn't much point to print more without delivery.

• Thirteen people died in North Dakota during the blizzard, including two young girls. A 6-year-old Strasburg girl, fully clothed for the outdoors, became separated from her two brothers when the children went from their home to the barn, a distance of 60 feet away. She was found two days later a quarter of a mile from home, frozen to death. Another girl, age 12, of Woodworth, slipped out of the house to close a chicken-coop door. She never again was seen alive after she started back to the house, which was only 100 feet away. Her frozen body was found the next day, a half mile from home.

Ryan


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## USSapper (Sep 26, 2005)

I know I read a story a couple years back, the first time i had even heard about this incident, in DU i think, the article had several diffferent first hand stories of duck hunters in the storm that survived. One story that has stuck with me is one of when the storm blew in, a man by himself, his only campanion his black lab took shelter underneath there duck boat. The only thing that kept the man alive was his dog. In another story, when the storm came in two hunters decided to pack up and head in, well the water froze so quick when one of the hunters was picking up the decoys that his legs froze into the ice. Hope nothing like this happens these days

Lindberg


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## aztec (Oct 27, 2005)

One of the reasons for the deaths in the Armistice Day storm was that many hunters only had row boats and the water got so rough that they could not row to safety. Even some of those that had the outboards of the day were stranded because of low power and starting problems in those cold condtions. Today's outboards would get more hunters to safety.


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## dakotashooter2 (Oct 31, 2003)

> But with the technology at our disposal we should see a storm of that magnitude coming well in advance to either prepare or abort the mission


.

Your kidding... right????

It seems that "reading" the weather has become a lost art. The weathermen of old seemed to have a "feel" for nature and while they were not always right they sure seemed to be as close as the modern technology. One particulare case I've noticed is long term predictions. Technology trys to give us precise information a week in advance, which generally proves to be off. While in the past we were given general trends with precision being added as the days advanced and I recall the information being as accurate or moreso than what we currently get. I don't even look at the forcast beyond 2 days anymore cause it is rarely accurate to the level of precision they are predicting.


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## 4CurlRedleg (Aug 31, 2003)

> Your kidding... right????


Yeah, I guess I was. With 4 different weather channels serving up radar and satelite imagery on TV and 15 different radio stations our information is a bit on the weak side. Oh I forgot one, the Internet. 8)

With that said there would not have been nearly so many fatalities with that storm IMO.


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## BigDaddy (Mar 4, 2002)

C'mon dakotashooter... Do you really think that today's hunters would be caught off-guard as much as those in 1940. 4Curl is right. We have radio stations up and down the radio dial with the ability to break into programming with storm warnings. In addition, most hunters have cell phones. I know for a fact that I would be flooded with calls from friends and Mrs. if they saw a severe weather warning on TV or heard it on the radio. I may be tough, but I am not going to ignore the Mrs.! Last, today's hunters are equiped with Gore-Tex, Thinsulate, and plenty of other materials that weren't available in 1940.

We might not be any smarter today than in 1940, but we certainly have access to enough information to not be caught off-guard.


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## ztrain (Jul 26, 2006)

Most women are not up at 4am watching the news to warn us about a storm that is suddenly brewing and will hit at 6am when we have been on the water. Cell phones, those should not be counted on with so many areas of no coverage off the beaten path. Yes, we have better clothing and there are many radio stations we can turn on even with a small radio, but we still have problems of drinking water if we get caught in this type of storm and we still isolate our selves for hours when we can't spook the game. How many times have we left the truck and say I don't need that coat today without checking the weather. We still and will always have to be ready for the unexpected when it comes to weather. Know how to read weather yourself and leave if it don't look good, but I am getting a feeling most of us would say, the weather man didn't say anything about a big storm today or even through the week.


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