Essays
Moseying: Exploring the Natural World
Winter Storms; Blue northers, ice fogs, and blizzards on the Llano Estacado
December 29, 2004
“It’s a blue norther!” Those words once infused Llaneros with dread and fear. Winter cold fronts on the Llano Estacado in west Texas can drop temperatures 40 degrees in an hour. Sandstorms often ride the leading edge of a “Polar Express,” and blizzards have followed. Several days of below freezing temperatures usually succeed a blue norther. In 1983 the bitterest “Big Chill” of the 20th century stayed for seventeen days. Last week’s cold snap reminded long-time Llaneros of the frozen pipes and oak trees with trunks split of that year.
“In 1983 I had to go out three times a day to break ice on my stock tanks so my cattle could drink. I found jackrabbits frozen to death. The deer in the chittamwood grove in the draw refused to move out of the trees – they just moved far enough so I would not bump into them. I swear they were taking turns breathing on each other to keep warm.” A visiting Mitchell County rancher last Thursday stood at the front door at the Sibley Nature Center, looking out at the snow covering plants in the Aubrey and Jean Reid Native Plant Garden, reminiscing. Fine snow slanted from a northeasterly direction, drawing a curtain obscuring the view of Hogan Park. For a couple of minutes he silently stared out. “The ice was 8 inches thick – I skated on it in my boots, sliding about, trying to get warm from the effort. I wore rags over my gloves as I sledgehammered the ice.”
He turned and pointed at the pond display at the other end of the room. “I see you still display the beak of that great blue heron I found frozen in one of the tanks. I never understood why he did not get out of the water and let the ice form around him. That was bizarre, a dead heron still standing, frozen stiff. In one of the stock tanks on the first morning the ice was clear and I could see tiger salamanders swimming slowly below.”
“A fellow brought in a hummingbird he found frozen to death after the Sibley building was erected in the winter of 1986. If I recollect, it was from that storm. I found a meadowlark with its wings glued to its body during the Midland Audubon Christmas Count that year. The count was actually cancelled, but nobody told me, and a friend and I spent the day roaming the roads south of town. The morning was foggy – and I remember seeing three big swans trying to land on the sewage ponds. On the Stanton Christmas Count I hiked around Red Lake (now known as Pleasure Lake) and by the time I met my ride on the Interstate I was shivering uncontrollably with the first stages of hypothermia, despite having on long johns and a lined jumpsuit.” We had turned back and were staring out the front door again, sipping coffee I had fixed.
My visitor nodded. “ Everybody has a story about winter weather. I remember reading some J. Frank Dobie tales about blue northers. One story told of a settler trying to outrun a blue norther with a wagon and team. He kept moving at the speed of the cold front, and his lead team died of heat exhaustion and the wheel team died of frost bite.” The fellow cackled. “And you know, I don’t think that was tall-tale exaggeration – not much anyway! I remember an old story about an early day cowboy who was caught in the blizzard of 1886. He was riding for the LFD, if I remember, and was trying to keep the cattle from drifting from the storm. He kept getting colder and colder and he couldn’t head the cattle back. He stayed with the job the best he could, and it cost him his life. His horse, still carrying his frozen body, drifted in to the corrals on the ranch near Midland where the horse had been raised, some 90 miles to the southeast.”
“I was recently digging around in some old photographs taken by my parents in the late 1950’s, and I found a set of photographs from February of 1956 of a horrible ice storm. The “Trees of Texas” on the then dirt Midkiff Road were bent to the ground, with broken branches and trunks. I looked in George Bomar’s “Texas Weather” and found out that in that storm 20 people died in the Panhandle, 24 inches of snow fell at Plainview, and that hundreds of people had to be rescued from their cars and from a stranded train stalled by snow drifts to thick to plow through. In another storm, in 1957, the wind blew 80 miles an hour, and all the electric and telephone lines went down. All that happened as the last big drought was ending – I wonder if something similar is coming now, now that it seems this worse drought is ending.” I carried our cups into the kitchen for a refill. When I came back, he was looking at a display featuring 12 inches of snow on the trees and cattails at the Sibley pond.
“Snow is mighty pretty. And so are ice storms. But dagnab it, they can be so destructive and so hateful when you have to do a job during one. I remember an ice fog one year. You couldn’t see a quarter mile. I drove out to feed the cattle and even with the truck defroster blasting on high the ice kept forming on the windshield. I had to stop and scrape the ice off a half-dozen times before I finished the job. When I got to the pavement I fishtailed all the way back to town, and even slid off the road twice despite having 4-wheel drive. In 1971 I was cowboying up in the Panhandle, trying to save up money for the rodeo circuit. That February thousands of cattle died in the region during a storm with 60 miles an hour winds that left snowdrifts 12 feet high. In January of 1973 I was on the road when another big blizzard hit Texas and 150,000 cattle died, and turkey farms in the Hill Country lost 25,000 turkeys.” He shook his head.
He stepped outside and reached up to the roof drain and snapped off an icicle. When he came back in, he sighed. “We humans are mighty puny, you know. When a bad winter comes along it can be as damaging to our lives as a hurricane. But I got to admit, I would love to have a big snow this winter. We have some good ground moisture with all the fall rains. I would love to see the ground get fluffed up – you know what I mean – after a snow it seems like the ground is loosened by the cycle of freezing and refreezing, making the earth perfect for good winter weed growth. I’ve noticed billions of tallowweed seedlings in my pastures and I swear they put the best weight on the stock. I would love to be able to restock to pre-drought numbers this year.”