The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1881-01-21
Former Severe Winters.

Former Severe Winters.
NEW YEARS day in 1864 will be re-
membered as long as any man or woman
Is hviug who undertook to make or re-
ceive Ills on Inat festive occasion, or
who VT, obliged to give up the idea of
doing either, as hundreds were, just by
reason of the low state of the thermom-
eter ard the\high state of the wind. On
Thursday, the last day of December,
there was tremendous snow-stOrm that
extended all through the Northwest, and
this was followed by gale that almost
took ones breath away. On Friday
morning, January 1, the thermometer
stood ut twenty below in Chicago, and
in the course of the next twenty-four
hours it got down to %. It was 80 at
Oshkosh, 80 at Rockford. 80 at Du-
buque. 26 at Kankakee, 38 at st. Paul,
S5 at Milwaukee, 33 at Galena, Is at st.
Louis, and so at Fort Smelling. Rail-
road trains hardly ran at all for three or
four days, and business throughout all
this part of the country was practically
suspended.
The winter of 1866 was, in the East
ern States, almost a reproduction of the
famous season of 1880. The cold
wave passed all over the United States
on the 23d and oath of December, and
severe cold weather continued for almost
three months. On the 10th of January,
following heavy snow-storm, the tenn
perature was 80 degrees below zero in
Chicago, 10 below at Washington, and
26 at Fort Smelling. At Woodstock, in
Vermont, the temperature fell to 43 de-
grees below, and at Enfield, N. H.,
Fryeburg, Me-, and many other places.
the mercury was frozen solid. 1t was
jocularly proposed at the time, in view
of what had happened in the Maine
town, to change its name to Freeze
burgh. Large quantities of snow lay in
Washington from New Years to the
middle of March, and ice covered the
Potomac for the same period. Long
Island Sound was closed to navigation
from January 25 to February 81, and the
harbor of New York was much obstruct-
ed by ice.
The most memorable storm, accom-
panied by exceptionally low tempera-
ture, that has ever taken place in ILL
nois, however, was in the early part of
1854. One incident of this storm is well
remembered. The members of the Leg
islature had been to Chicago on an ex-
cursion, and were just returning to
Springfield on the recently
Chicago & Alton Road, when the train,
of over 800 passengers, met the begin
ming of the snow-storm at Joliet. It
grew more and more violent, and the
wind shifted to the southwest and blew
" blizzard" until, just as it was be-
coming dark, the engine stuck in a
snow-bank, about five miles south of the
station-house, which was the only build
ing where the village of Dwight now
stands, and there it remained all night.
The next morning the passengers broke
up an emigrant car for fuel, and for food
they were obliged to content themselves
by eating quantity of oysters, cut in
frozen chunks from the cans which
were luckily In the baggage car, on their
way to be served up at reception
which Governor Matteson was to give
that evening to the coming Assembly
men in Springfield. There was then
nothing more to eat, and no fuel to start
up the locomotive, and no possibility of
starting even if there had been fuel. In
the course.of the day fifty or seventy
five of the passengers made their way
on foot fifteen miles through the snow
to Pontiac, where they organized a re-
lief band the next morning, which,
however, was able TO make but little
Roadway. The train was moved some
distance in the course of that day by the
aid of engines from Joliet, but two of
them ran off the track in another snow
drift, and there the whole train, with
the old men, women and children, and
with one invalid, who had been severely
frozen while attempting the relief, re-
manned for two whole weeks, being pro-
visioned chiefly by food sent across the
country from Morris. Governor Matte
son sent sleds from Springfield, over 100
miles, which took the legislators from
their prison on wheels back to their
work in the State-house.
The winter of 1889 was also one to
be remembered in Chicago. A great
snow-storm came in January, and from
that time on, with steady cold weather,
which prevented any thaw to speak of,
the snow kept piling up by one storm
after another until April, when a warm
rain produced flood which, causing
the waters of Aux PLANES to overflow
and pour into the South Branch, swept
bridges, canalboats and shipping of all
sorts out into the lake, and pretty much
inundated the southern part of the city,
and the vast expanse of low lands lying
to the south and west of it.
The winter of 1S34-5 deserves to be
marked in the annals of cold weather.
On the 4th of January the exceedingly
uncomfortable temperature of 40 de-
grees below zero was reached at Mont
pelier, VT, at Bath and Bangor in
Maine, and at Franconia, in New Hamp-
shire; and on the 9Th of February fol-
lowing the same figure was reached at
New Lebanon, N. Y. At that time near
ly all the surface of the United States,
as then observed, or all east of the great
plains, was below zero. No such gen.
eral and excessive depression occurred
again for more than twenty years.
Near the end of the same year,
however, Dec 10, 1885, the Temperature