The Children's Blizzard - A Book Review

Considering central Ohio's cold weather these past weeks perhaps January, 2018, was not the best time to read The Children's Blizzard, a book about the blizzard of January 12, 1888.  But reading it now (while I'm mostly succeeding at staying warm) made me realize how grateful I am to live here and now. 

The early days of January, 1888, had been in the -20s in the plains of Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa.  So when, on January 12, the morning temperature was in the 40s, it seemed almost like a warm spring day.  Children went off to school while their families were outside doing chores the cold and snow had prevented them from doing earlier.  They were dressed for warm weather.  No one knew the weather would change so abruptly. 

In this book the author leads us into the storm by first telling us a history of some of the families who were affected -- their immigration, where they settled, family members and ages, etc.  He then gives us a history of the U.S. Army Signal Corps (and several of the indications officers, the men who prepared the weather forecasts) as they applied to the localities affected by the blizzard.  We learn about the abruptness of the blizzard's blast, what it looked and felt like, and how it affected some of the individuals and families who were introduced in the first chapters of the book.

This is Larson's briefest description of the blizzard, presented in the introduction. 

The blizzard of 1888 was unprecedented in its violence and suddenness.  There was no atmospheric herald.  No eerie green tinge to the sky or fleecy cirrus forerunner.  One moment it was mild, the sun was shining, a damp wind blew fitfully out of the south—the next moment frozen hell had broken loose.  The air was so thick with fine-ground wind-lashed ice crystals that people could not breathe.  The ice dust webbed their eyelashes and sealed their eyes shut.  It sifted into the loose weave of their coats, shirts, dresses, and underwear until their skin was packed in snow.  Farmers who had spent a decade walking the same worn paths became disoriented in seconds (p.6). 

Because of the warmth of the day, the children had gone to school with light wraps, no gloves or mittens, without boots.  Is it any wonder that hundreds died that day and night, some trying to reach home or, with the aid of their teachers, trying to reach some place of safety, others trying to find those who hadn't come home.

This is Laskin's description of frigid air as it touches one's body.

It's hard to find vocabulary for weather this cold.  The senses become first sharp and then dulled.  Objects etch themselves with hyperclarity on the dense air, but it's hard to keep your eyes open to look at them steadily.  When you first step outside from a heated space, the blast of 46-below-zero air clears the mind like a ringing slap.  After a breath or two, ice builds up on the hairs lining your nasal passages and the clear film bathing your eyeballs thickens.  If the wind is calm and if your body, head, and hands are covered, you feel preternaturally alert and focused.  At first.  A dozen paces from the door, your throat begins to feel raw, your lips dry and crack, tears sting the corners of your eyes.  The cold becomes at once a knife and, paradoxically, a flame, cutting and scorching exposed skin (p. 64).

Later in the book he describes how hypothermia gradually takes over a body, little by little, from the first feeling of cold to the last feeling of too hot.  Laskin takes the reader with five boys as they leave school together, try to reach home in the blizzard, and get lost along the way.  He explains how the blizzard's cold effected their minds and their bodies as they became colder and colder.  (They did not survive.)

Reading this book changed my idea of a blizzard.  Now I understand that a blizzard's winds are so strong that one can't walk a straight line; that falling, swirling snow and fine ice crystals are so dense in the air that one cannot see one's hands in front of one's face; and that the cold is so intense that one may freeze to death in a matter of hours.  If this particular blizzard had lasted only several hours, things might have turned out differently, but it continued for most of a day and long into the night with temperatures dropping steadily.

Science is not my strength so I didn't love the longish chapter on meteorology, winds, fronts, highs, lows, etc., but the other parts of the book drew me in.  What sadness for the families who lost loved-ones who were caught in the storm or survived the storm only to die of its effects on their bodies, and for the individuals who lost limbs to frostbite.  I thought Laskin's descriptions were amazing.

My one small problem with the book was the sources and lack of foot- or endnotes.  Sources were listed by chapter at the end of the book but sometimes the sources for statements in the chapters were specific, some were more general.  However, on the positive side, Laskin's research was extensive based on the number of sources he listed. 

You may enjoy this book
▸if you love cold weather, whether or not you've been in a blizzard.
▸if you've survived a blizzard.
▸if you're sitting in a warm, cozy house.
▸if you've never experienced cold weather and/or a blizzard but are curious about it.
▸if you love meteorology.
▸if you have ancestors who lived on the Plains during the 1800s.
▸if you generally enjoy learning about significant events in America's history.

I thought The Children's Blizzard was worth my time.  Maybe you will think so, too.

--Nancy.

Copyright ©2018, Nancy Messier. All Rights Reserved.
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