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Arctic Blast Sparks Deadly Blizzard

A farmer in Dakota grows worried about the unusually warm weather, sensing something is wrong with the sky. Three massive weather systems were converging - warm air, freezing Arctic air, and a dangerous low-pressure system churning across the continent. Their collision would create a monstrous blizzard of terrifying violence. Students had no idea this storm was brewing overhead, and even weather experts at the time did not anticipate the severity of the coming weather.

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959 views2 pages

Arctic Blast Sparks Deadly Blizzard

A farmer in Dakota grows worried about the unusually warm weather, sensing something is wrong with the sky. Three massive weather systems were converging - warm air, freezing Arctic air, and a dangerous low-pressure system churning across the continent. Their collision would create a monstrous blizzard of terrifying violence. Students had no idea this storm was brewing overhead, and even weather experts at the time did not anticipate the severity of the coming weather.

Uploaded by

api-330119274
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Chapter 1 An Artic Blast

But not everyone was smiling at the surprisingly warm weather


and the glowing sky. Some people had learned the hard way that
they should never trust the weather on American’s northern
prairie, especially in the winter. Wasn’t there something spooky
about the color of the sky? Wasn’t it odd that the temperature
had jumped more than forty degrees overnight? A Dakota
farmer named John Buchmillar thought so. He told his twelve-
year-old daughter, Josephine, that she would be staying put that
day. “There’s something in the air,” he said to her with a worried
glance at the sky.

There was indeed something in the air, and it was headed


directly toward America’s vast midsection. High up in the sky,
three separate weather systems – masses of air of different
temperatures -were about to crash together. The warm air that
had delighted the school children that morning would soon
smash into a sheet of freezing Artic air speeding down from
Canada. Most dangerous of all was a low-pressure system – a
spinning mess of unstable air churning its way across the
continent from the northeast. The meeting of these three
weather systems would soon create a monstrous blizzard, a
frozen white hurricane of terrifying violence.

3
But Walter Allen and his classmates had no idea what was
brewing above them in the endless prairie sky. Not even the
experts knew what was coming. First Lieutenant Thomas
Woodruff, trained int eh brand-new science of weather
forecasting, was working at his office in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It
was Woodruff’s job to gather information about the weather,
including the temperature and wind speeds, in surrounding
areas. Using this information, Woodruff would try to predict
what weather was heading down to the area around Groton.

At 3:00 p.m. the day before, Woodruff had sent out his
prediction for the following day. His forecast would be printed in
small-town newspapers.
“For Minnesota and Dakota: Slightly warmer fair weather, light
to fresh variable winds.”

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