Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1883 — Cold Weather in Nevada. [ARTICLE]

Cold Weather in Nevada.

Fife Lake Comet. “This weather doesn’t quite come up to two years ago, Bob, when the snow was seven feet deep, and trains were snowed in for four days. That was a hard winter.” “Hard winter! Wy, that was nothin* at all. Eight years ago the trains didn’t get through here for three months, and Uncle John Crayton had to pack all his provisions over from Traverse on snowshoes.” “Yes, that was pretty tough, but it wasn’t a marker to the winter Burt Howe stole Doc Morgan’s turkeys, and had them all dressed lefore Doc quit raffling. Don't you min i how the wind blew, too, and how it drifted? Nick Theirs logged two eighties that winter on section 13, and in the spring Will Bailey happened down that way looking for land, and got into them stumps. ‘Great bull-frog.’ The shortest stump in that lot was forty feet high. Will bought the stump land at fifty cents an acre, and made .&8,000 logging it over again next year.” “Oh, I know all about that. Such stories as that might do to tell in Florida, or in a warm part of Texas. But you don’t want to talk to ma a minute about Fife Lake Winters. W’y, boy, I was here ’fore you was bom. You never heerd of the winter of ’49?” “No; let ’er drive,” “Well, that was a windy year, and it was a little cold. Winter set ip the 12th of November with the damdest whirl wind you ever smelt of. Whaf do you s’pose I saw when I went down t' the lake next morning to take a swim?” “What was it?’’ “Well, the lake had froze thirty-four feet deep dunn* the night, un* right out in the middle that dumed cyclone had raise a chunk of water sixty feet high un’ it had frozen there stiff as a green Norway in February. The blamed thing was’bout a l.unlred feet ’cross the top, and tapered down to ’bout an in *h at the . bottom. The wind was blowiu* like an old settle’*, too." “Did she blow over, Bob?” “Nary a blow. Before the wind could heave ’er over one way it would whew I ‘round and >igh| ’er up again. And she krf-pt goin’ that way until the 4th of next June.” |