Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1884 — Terrors of a Dakota Blizzard. [ARTICLE]

Terrors of a Dakota Blizzard.

A snowfall which in some localities would scarcely make good sleighing becomes in this region a foe to human life of almost inconceivable fury. The flakes are always small and dry, and borne along by winds of such power as . to make locomotion almost impossible; they cut the flesh like razors. The blizzard comes up suddenly, like a tornado, wrapping the earth in semi-dark-ness, and yet giving everything the appearance of whiteness. Objects a dozen yards away are shut out from view, and the wayfarer is blinded and stifled by the whizzing clouds which envelop him. In thirty minutes from the beginning of one of these storms it is hard to tell whether there is one foot or five feet of snow, and whether, in fact, the greater part is on the ground ©r in the air. When a blizzard once attacks a section it grows colder very rapidly, and, added to the- terrors of people who may be caught in it on the open prairies, is the extreme probability that they will freeze to death. As nothing can prevent a man losing his way in a blizzard, so nothing in the shape of clothing can prevent his freezing to death if he cannot find shelter from the cold which follows. It is very difficult to tell just when it stops sndwing. The wind keeps the air filled with icy particles; long after the clouds have passed away, and so furiously is the light snow driven by the gale that even then the vision is almost as circumscribed as before. A stranger experiencing this stage of a blizzard would protest that he never saw it snow so fast, but in the momentary lulls of. the wind he would see the cloudless sky and know that the blinding blast was but the afterclap of the great storm. There will be drifts ten feet high packed so hard that a human foot will sink in them but a few inches. Then there wilt be acres of wind-swept earth as destitute of snow as in midsummer. To live in these blizzards is almost an impossibility. No horse can be made to face the blast, and only men who have long been accustomed to the rigors of the north can breathe in them. There is something suffocating about the wind. The nostrils and tongue seem ready to congeal and the eyes ache far back in their sockets. Ten > feet away may yawn a chasm, yet the driving snows will hide it from view. There is a ringing, roaring noise, such as is sometimes faintly heard under telegraph wires on a clear, cold night. At times the roar of the storm will resemble nothing so much as escaping steam. . like a thousand locomotives blowing off at once. When this dies out for an instant the ringing noise will rise and fall, sometimes a shriek and sometimes a hum.— Dakota letter.