A Terrifying, Deadly Storm Struck North Dakota In 1888 And No One Saw It Coming

After experiencing winter in North Dakota, most people know that the weather can be somewhat unpredictable. It could be sunny and just a bit chilly one minute and then a whiteout in the next. This seems especially true as the season goes on and we think it is finally getting warmer and closer to spring. Such was the case over a century ago on January 12, 1888, a year before North Dakota was even an individual state. The frigid winter was finally seeming to warm up and everyone was enjoying the nicer temperatures on a seemingly clear day. What they didn’t know was that within hours, that day would become known as the day one of the worst blizzards to ever hit the midwest occurred.

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This blizzard was deadly and that was mainly due to the fact that it caught everyone unaware in the middle of the day. People were at work, children at school, and since it was warm out most people were just taking advantage of the seemingly nice weather. They did not know what was about to happen over the course of just hours.

The storm front began to sweep up from Colorado and Montana, gaining traction as it headed northeast over the Dakota Territory. By midday in North Dakota, the temperature suddenly dropped from over freezing to well below zero. In some places it was nearly -40 degrees Fahrenheit, when just hours before it had been the exact opposite.

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The image above were illustrations made in a newspaper covering the events of the blizzard, now called the Schoolhouse Blizzard, in North Dakota. It was named that because of the devastating stories of children who had gone to school that day to one-room schoolhouses and ended up stranded there when the storm hit. Most teachers kept their students at school waiting for the storm to pass. Unfortunately, many were dismissed to hurry home before the storm got too bad, but many did not make it.

The final death toll was 235 people, most all of them caught out in the storm when it hit and unable to get to shelter. Because of the sheer amount of snow that fell, travel was nearly impossible for a few days afterwards.

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The Schoolhouse Blizzard was certainly the most deadly but not the only one to hit North Dakota. The famous image above was taken in 1966 after another particularly bad snowstorm and there have been other notable blizzards in the state that have caught national attention.

This blizzard has been ranked as one of the worst disasters to ever happen to North Dakota among others you can see here.