“Incredible”: Looking Back on the Blizzard of ’66

This March will mark the 50th anniversary of what is likely the worst blizzard of modern times.

The storm lasted nearly 4 days and dropped over 30 inches of snow over a large part of Eastern North Dakota.

It seems everyone that was living here in 1966 has a story from this storm.

We’ll hear some of those stories and examine how this monster storm came together.

This amount of snow was not expected in March 2nd 1966.

The forecast called for a mere two inches
 
Ginny Dullum: “There were really no storm warnings like we have now on apps or TV or anything so we just went out, not expecting anything,” said 1966 UND student Ginny Dullum.

Not knowing the highway would soon look like this, Ginny set off from Bismarck to Grand Forks.

“Right in front of us there were two cars that had T-boned,” she said, “so we didn’t have much choice so we went in the ditch. Then it occurred to us that the ditch was probably better riding then the road was so we rode down the ditch for a while and then we decided when the time was right we got out of the ditch and we made it home safely.”
 
“It was about 10 o’clock in the morning, I was in downtown Valley City, and I noticed these big flakes coming down. I mean they were huge. And they were quietly coming down. There was no wind. And I thought, oh boy this is going to be a blizzard if this wind picks up, which it did,” said Larry Gauper, who lived in Valley City in 1966.
 
Cole Carley: They let us out of school on a Wednesday afternoon and we thought gee, it doesn’t seem to be snowing that much. Of course by Wednesday evening it was snowing pretty hard and by Thursday morning you couldn’t see a thing,” said Cole Carley, who lived in Casselton in 1966.
 
“We were legitimately talking 70 to 80 mph winds gust and there were likely gusts that were approaching 100. I’ve never really found an ob that would say that,” said North Dakota Asst. State Climatologist, Daryl Ritchison.

So just what were the conditions that allowed for so much snow and wind?

“In this area a lot of people think of two snow storms events.
There are Alberta Clippers and then there are the famous Colorado low or Hooker storms that come up from the pan-handles of Texas and Oklahoma,” Ritchison explains. “Really through out history of North Dakota and Northern Minnesota the worst storms come from what I would describe as hybrid storms. They’re a little bit of both. And the storm of March of 1966 was a what I would describe as a hybrid storm that moved through the area.”

By Thursday March 3rd, these two lows had merged over Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Over the next 24 hours, the storm moved a mere 170 miles to around Alexandria, Minnesota.

Dumping huge amounts of snow over eastern North Dakota and creating a wicked wind from the north that would pile the snow into 20 to 30 foot drifts.

“And for 42 straight hours, the Bismarck Airport reported nearly zero visibility.  Forty-two straight hours,” Ritchison said. “That’s nearly two straight days. That’s incredible.”

Gauper was working at a radio station in Valley City in 1966 and recalls his attempt to go to work on March 3rd.

“I woke up at about 5 o’clock, to sign on the station at 6:30 and the snow you wouldn’t believe, he said.  I got in my Ford Fairlane 500 and I tried to drive down to the studio. I got about a block from the house and got stuck in the snow, but I went back in that apartment and I called a fellow, a young fellow downtown, who lived there, and I said would you go over and sign on the station. He signed on the station and I went back to bed. And I was used to staying home when there was a blizzard, now I was in my 20’s and working and I’m supposed to go to work? And I missed a great opportunity to talk to the whole town. And I talked more after that because I was the morning man and they said we missed you on the radio. We thought you’d be on the radio? We were going to tune you in and I wasn’t there. I feel like I let them down. If I’d have bundled up, walked about three blocks to the Main Avenue and headed east, there were street lights, police cars still out, I could have made it. No…I went back to bed. That’s a cop out in a North Dakota blizzard. You’re supposed to make it through.”

Coming up tomorrow night at 9, we’ll look at the incredible amounts of snow and drifts created by the storm, plus we’ll talk to the man that took this picture, which may be the most famous of the blizzard of 1966.