Growing up in Montana, I was used to hearing stories of cold temperatures and massive blizzards. In Montana history, we studied the blizzard of 1886. Montana was a place of open cattle ranching at the time, and the summer of 1886 was hot and dry, with grass too short to support the large herds of cattle on the range. The rains finally came in October, and the temperature plummeted. As the rain turned to snow, the ice crusted over what grass was left, making it impossible for the cattle to find food. The ranchers could do nothing to save their livestock. In January, a killer blizzard swept across the state and killed what cattle had not previously starved. Cattle froze standing up. Cattle died in the streets of small towns. Cattle carcasses dotted the landscape. Ranchers went bankrupt. After that winter, ranchers began fencing pastures and growing hay and alfalfa to store feed for winter. In our history classes, we were taught that the winter of 1886 changed Montana ranching from free range to fenced pastures.

The old timers used to tell stories of the winter of '36. The cold set in deep that year. There were stories of temperatures of -60. The depression was already affecting every town in the state, with fuel shortages because money was scarce. Inventories of groceries and animal feed in stores were low. Schools closed. Water pipes froze. Train boilers froze and cracked open. When the chinook winds brought warmer weather in March, it was a false spring, and temperatures went back to -30 in April.

I grew up thinking that the weather was much worse before I was born. That is the way the stories were told in my hometown. “You think it is cold now? Back when I was a kid, it stayed below zero for a solid month!” “You think this snow is deep? I remember when we had to shovel snow to get out of the second-story window of our house!”

That said, I did survive the blizzard of ’69, during which 32 inches of snow fell in a couple of days in late April, and drifts 20 feet deep developed across the southeastern corner of the state.

And there were some memorable blizzards when I lived in South Dakota. The heaviest snows come in the spring. In 2015, we experienced a blizzard on Mother's Day, with more than twenty inches of heavy, wet snow. May blizzards didn’t occur every year, but April Blizzards brought down trees during Holy Week one year. I had to drag trees away from the entrance of the church with my pickup to prepare for Easter services that year.

The big blizzard during our time in Rapid City came in the fall, not the spring, however. In 2013, heavy snow came in a three-day blizzard at the beginning of October. It set records for October snowfall and produced some records for the most snow in a single day. The snow was preceded by freezing rain, and the extra weight brought down trees all around the area. On Friday afternoon, we barely made it home from church, having to drive around one street clogged with cars that couldn’t make it up the hill. When we got to our street, the snow at the bottom of the hill was so deep that our all-wheel drive car couldn’t make it up the hill. With the help of tire chains and neighbors, we managed to get it into a neighbor’s driveway and then walked home. Overnight, we lost two trees in our backyard. By Saturday morning, we were snowed in. At the bottom of our street, not far from where we had left our car, other cars had gotten stuck, and the street was completely blocked. I blew snow, cleared a bit of our driveway, and put tire chains on all four wheels of our 4-wheel drive pickup, but there was nowhere to go with the street blocked. The electricity was off, but we had a wood stove for heat. Church services were cancelled on Sunday. By Monday afternoon, I had cleared the snow from our driveway, and our neighbors had cleared the street enough for us to get our car up to our driveway. We shoveled and blew snow from driveways up and down the street. There wasn’t much else to do. I worked on cutting up the fallen trees in the backyard.

Suffice it to say that I have blizzard stories to tell. I may even tell a few of them this weekend. The forecast calls for the winds to pick up today as a large storm approaches our area. The winds will be accompanied by heavy rain. Forecasters are warning of possible power outages and urban flooding. We’re safe from floods, and our gas fireplace has a pilot light, which means it works when the electricity is off. We’ll be warm, and wind gusts of 40 - 45 mph don’t seem that severe to me. The rain and wind might keep me from riding my bike as much as usual, but we’re not going to get snowed in.

It will snow in the mountains. Mount Baker is expected to add a foot or more of snow. It is snow-capped year-round, but we will notice the snow line descending to lower elevations. The combination of snow in the mountains and heavy rain downstream will cause the rivers to rise. We’ve seen fall flooding since we moved to the area, but this storm follows a dry period, and the reservoirs are all low. Heavy river flooding is not expected.

With any luck, the storm will have passed by Sunday, and folks will be eager to get out to church. I may even hear a few tales of big waves at the beach or a tree that fell into a power line. Some of our friends may have extra cleanup in their yards after the winds. I’ll listen to them report and then begin, “You think that was windy? I remember the October blizzard of ’13 when we were snowed in for three days with no electricity. . .”