Remembering the blizzard of 1968-69
From the Winter 2017 Issue
Ross Hall Collection
Ross Hall Collection
The Blizzard of ’69 actually started in 1968. It quit – finally — in 1969, after six weeks of winter on steroids. My recollection – augmented by others’ memories and archives at the museum — is this:
Dec. 30, I open the back door to go to work at Travler’s Motel and – holy snow flakes! The walks are full. My car is buried. Snow is horizontal.
I face into the blowing snow and begin the wade through two feet of snow to the motel on Fifth. The lobby door is snowed in. From both sides. A foot of fine snow has sifted in under the door. I shovel both sides. The thermometer reads minus 30. Holy frostbite!
Breakfast cocktails
The motel is full of skiers. They can’t get to Schweitzer, which is closed anyway. In 1969, Sunday in Idaho is dry, but skiers from the country up north, ever prepared for such emergencies, have broken out private supplies of alcohol and are having cocktails with their eggs. At 8 a.m., I call my boss for advice.
His sage words to this high school senior: Stay out of the restaurant.
Next morning, minus 37. The people from up north brought enough for Monday, too.
Thus began the blizzard, but snow has been coming in record amounts — 32 inches in December, 12 inches over average. By Jan. 16, six more than the 24-inch January average has already fallen.
Our dad’s 1967 F-100 four-wheel-drive pickup with a newly installed block heater and tire chains is the go-to neighborhood transportation option. The sheriff allows snowmobiles on public roads. Most curbs are piled so high that there is no more piling. It keeps coming.
Giant snow castles
By Jan. 23, the storm has become old news, moving to the back page of Section A of the Sandpoint News-Bulletin. That day, though, the temperature drops to minus 14. Here we go again. Sixty-seven inches of snow have fallen. Schools are still closed. Kids are incredulously happy – giant snow castles are being built in massive curbside piles – but they are the only ones. The school board begins talking about school on Saturdays. Ha! The teachers put the skids on that.
Jan. 30, weather comes back to the front page. “Bonner County struggling out from under worst storm in more than 20 years.”
Ten lows in single digits or below zero since Dec. 28 and 82 inches of snow, 20 since Jan.16. Twelve-foot drifts in town, 20-foot drifts in the Selle Valley. The county begs the state for a rotary plow. Papa Bear, aka Chair 4, aka Sunnyside, opens at Schweitzer, with snow accumulation at 161 inches, but nobody can get to the celebration.
The Boy Scout troops of Sandpoint get stranded at Camp Stidwell on Mirror Lake. Troop 111 and the Sea Scouts, of which my brothers are members, enjoy the luck. The F-100 provides a ride home for many. As a last hurrah, the Idaho Elks Convention gets stranded the first weekend in February. They, too, have brought emergency supplies. Once again, I stay out of the restaurant on Sunday.
On Feb. 6, Mother Nature is done. The blizzard of 1969, that started in 1968, is over.
It was the coolest.
–Sandy Compton
13 responses to “Remembering the blizzard of 1968-69”
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I lived on West 81st St. When I woke up that morning — the morning after Mayor Lindsey deluded that plowing could wait until morning — it was very quiet. There were no typical city sounds — just the wonderful, quiet, beautiful, clean white snow. Cars were buried, roaring buses were gone — even the subways were closed! And then I heard the laughter. — kids and adults having snowball fights and laughing joyously, using garbage can lids and pieces f cardboard as sleds, and getting skis out to glide through the traffic less streets of the Big Apple. It was a little bit of Heaven. But Mayor John Lindsey was NOT re-elected.
I was there.
Thanks for the education guys! I was just watching a review on Rise of the Guardians, and they mentioned this blizzard, so I thought I’d go down a rabbit hole lol. I’ve heard some oldtimers’ stories about this blizzard, and I’m over in Michigan. It must have covered a pretty wide area, because wasn’t it over in Australia as well?
Meanwhile, the closest I’ve ever experienced was the winter of 2013-2014. I still have the picture I took when my dad called to me on Christmas Eve morning to look out my window: At that point, we had about 4-6in of snow on the ground, and then the previous night was freezing rain: Everything that morning was encased in ice. Every individual branch, every individual leaf and berry and blade of tall grass in the side yard. It was like chrystal. It was beautiful.
Our mayor in Owosso, MI called for a state of emergency TWICE that winter. Even made the local news (from Flint; although they absolutely got their b-roll wrong. That was Vernon). When you have black ice, then 4-6in of snow, then freezing rain, it makes travel a bit difficult. We lived out in the country at the time. My brother ended up in the ditch on his way home (everyone was fine), and thank God we were on a completely different grid for power and we had well water because EVERYONE who lived in town lost power and water the week of Christmas. I remember seeing all the downed branches people had cleared from their yards waiting at the curb for pick up and wondering why they didn’t try throwing it in their ovens to heat their houses. All of our extended family who lived in the area came to our house for Christmas that year simply so they could take a shower lol