7/22/2010:
July is always the hottest month for North Dakotans and the hottest July ever recorded in the state's history came in 1936. Just how difficult were the heat and concurrent drought conditions that summer? Well, the town of Steele, forty miles east of Bismarck, established a new all-time state record high of 121 degrees on July 6th. Steele's citizens endured fourteen straight days with temperatures higher than 100 degrees from July 5th to July 18th, and on July 19th it still hit 95.
The heat wave was deadly for elderly residents and for infants. Nationally, nearly 5,000 people died from the extreme temperatures that year.
To cope with the heat, North Dakotans were dependent upon electric fans, for few homes had air conditioning, which was most often found in movie theaters and in some businesses.
People tried various ways to cool off. In Grand Forks, city officials put a four hundred pound block of ice in the Riverside Park Swimming Pool. But they admitted, "The ice will not last long."
The heat was hard on wild animals, too. The prairie potholes, havens for wild ducks, dried up in that heat and drought. North Dakota Game and Fish Department Officials estimated that ONE-HALF of North Dakota's nesting ducks "perished in the relentless drouth."
Near the town of Napoleon, ducks abandoned a dry lake and went into town searching for water. Sportsmen placed small water pans around town.
Traveling salesmen reported a way to beat the heat in days prior to auto air-conditioning. A person could keep his car cool inside by putting a 100 pound block of ice in a metal washtub in the back seat and keeping the windows closed. A driver could "ride all day in comfort" with the ice-block improvisation.
Electric fans were in great demand. One Fargo store "reported 150 fans sold" on July 8th, when the high hit 103 degrees. Another store sold 39 fans in an hour-and-a-half that day.
Escaping the heat even led to crime. A man named James Doyle, described as a "transient" by a Fargo Forum reporter, "was alleged to have stolen a large cake of ice" from a railway refrigerator car. Police took the suspect and the evidence to the police station where Doyle was put in the county jail, but Cass County states attorney Odin Strandness was pessimistic about his chances to convict Mr. Doyle of petty larceny because he had no "evidence in the ice cake theft case." The evidence had disappeared - having melted on the way to the police station!
Dakota Datebook written by Dr. Steve Hoffbeck, History Department, MSU Moorhead.
Sources:
"Evidence in Ice Cake Theft Vanishes; Melted," Fargo Forum, July 8, 1936, p. 1.
"Fargo Fan Supply ‘Melting Like Ice' During Heat Wave," Fargo Forum, July 8, 1936, in files of Clay County Historical Society, Moorhead, MN.
"Heat Toll in Northwest Is Mounting Fast," Bemidji Daily Pioneer, July 13, 1936, p. 4.
"Climatological Data: North Dakota Section, July 1936," U.S. Department of Agriculture, Weather Bureau, vol. XLV, no. 7, Bismarck, N.D., p. 28, for high temperatures.
"Ice To Be Placed in Park Swimming Pool," Grand Forks Herald, July 12, 1936, p. 9.
"Fear Ducks to Perish as Drouth Dries Up Lakes," Grand Forks Herald, July 10, 1936, p. 11; "N.D. Sportsmen Move Ducks From Dwindling Lakes in Drouth Area," Grand Forks Herald, July 7, 1936, p. 5; "300,000 Ducks Estimated Dead as Result of Drouth," Grand Forks Herald, July 14, 1936, p. 3.
Salesmen in "Notes Out of Swelter Belt," Minot Daily News, July 9, 1936, p. 1.