Nasty winters can stand as a measure against all other weather, such as the winter of 1996-97, when Fargo received almost ten feet of snow and Grand Forks flooded soon after Blizzard Hannah. No one alive today experienced the winter of 1886-87, but it made for a miserable time in Dakota Territory.
That winter arrived with a blast in western Dakota, with a November blizzard that saw the temperature drop to forty below. Ranchers out west felt the teeth of the brutal winter. Most of the cattle on the western range died – up to 60 or 70%. The previous summer had been dry and not much grass was left, and the cattle were caught out on the range as the storm hit. The losses were terrible. Young Theodore Roosevelt’s herd sustained “crippling losses” at his ranch near Medora.
Winter’s wrath also extended east across Dakota that season. Bismarck’s temperature had a below zero average from December to February. On this date in 1887, Fargo measured an all-time record low of -48?F.
The winter of 1886-87 also laid cabin fever on the people of the prairie. Cowboys had nothing to do but play cards and checkers and make music. In a letter to his father, one man in Bismarck lamented the horrible weather and “no meat in the house.”
March of ’87 brought a sudden warming. The Dickinson press quoted witness Lincoln Lang: “We suddenly heard a roar … coming from the direction of the Little Missouri … The river was out of banks clear up into the cottonwoods …. [with] huge, grinding ice-cakes, up-ending and rolling over each other as they went, tearing down trees … ripping, smashing, tearing at each other and everything in their course. … The spectacle held us spellbound.”
As the weeks went by and the snow retreated, the cattlemen could finally count their losses. The coulees were packed with dead cattle, and here and there, a carcass was found high in a tree, where the animal had climbed a snowdrift to eat the tender branches.
When Theodore Roosevelt visited the scene, he wrote, “You cannot imagine anything more dreary than the look of the Bad Lands.”
Dakota Datebook by Jack Dura
Sources:
files.dnr.state.mn.us/natural_resources/climate/summaries_and_publications/fargo_climate.pdf
agweek.com/news/weather/3863915-weather-talk-earliest-sub-zero-temp-was-october
westfargopioneer.com/news/weather/4370368-weather-talk-cold-weather-coming-little-less-frequently
bismarcktribune.com/news/local/winter-of---stands-as-coldest/article_e31e9065-975c-551a-b3b1-e967e9231dc9.html
grandforksherald.com/news/4244903-april-4-1997-hard-hearted-hannah-was-worst-series-blizzards
ndstudies.gov/gr8/content/unit-iii-waves-development-1861-1920/lesson-2-making-living/topic-2-ranching/section-1-ranching
Di Silvestro, R.L. (2011). Theodore Roosevelt in the badlands: A young politician’s quest for recovery in the American west. Bloomsbury USA: New York, NY
