DRIFTS
The winter of ’78 was the snowiest on record for the Midwest. So much snow and really low temperatures it sticks forever in our collective memory. I was living out in Kansas with my first wife back then, far out in the country. I had finished building our house in ’76, and just finished building our garage/office adjacent to the house. I had installed efficient wood stoves for supplementary heat, and we cooked on a propane kitchen stove. Fortunate choices.
The snow and low temperatures started early that winter. By Christmas, the ground cover was averaging two feet and, in windy Kansas, the drifting was amazing. I dug trails to the horse corral, the chicken house , and to the wood lot. I re-supplied the wood pile every Saturday, burning a wheelbarrow full of hedge wood every day
The County worked continuously to keep the roads clear, which was appreciated as I worked 40 miles away in Kansas City. Getting through got progressively more difficult as the winter wore on. I selected routes to my house based on the elevation of the roadway. If it was on high ground, the wind scoured the snow off leaving only minor traveling drifts. These are the drifts that start on the windward side of the road right after the grader comes through, and built up to a couple of feet deep as they creep across. My truck could break those, but I took to carrying a couple of shovels to clear the tracks when necessary.
One difficult section of road running west of Sommerset had an eighth mile of four foot cut. This cut would drift full, making this, the last possible route home, almost impossible. Generally, the County kept this passable, although one night coming home after a windy snow filled day, they had not. I stopped at the rise before the cut and surveyed the situation. No help for it. It was the only possible way to get home.
The road had been cleared many times and a heavily banked one-lane track ran through the cut. I backed up to Sommerset, figuring if I could get up enough speed, the cut banks would keep me going straight, and I could plow through. I floored it, picking up speed to 60 mph, and hit the four foot high by eighth mile long drift. Almost instantly, I couldn’t see anything through the wave of white pouring over the hood. The truck bounced back and forth and started slowing down. I kept it on the floor. At the last moment before completely bogging down, I broke through, and the engine died.
Getting out, I raised the hood and contemplated the completely snow packed engine compartment. I expected this, and got my small camp shovel out of the back. As I dug out the snow, the engine heat started melting it. Soon enough, the tough 400 CID Ford started up again and we were off. Next, I had to turn south on Oak Grove Road, go two miles and climb the steep hill to 327th road. Easy enough since the wind blew straight down Oak Grove keeping it clear. At 327th, I turned back east for a half mile to my driveway. 327th lay just over the ridge and always accumulated a deep drift, but the County had run down it earlier in the day and the drift wasn’t too deep yet.
Finally home, all I had to do now was replenish the wheel barrow with wood, breaking a new path to the wood yard, feed the horses, breaking a new path to the corral, and check on the chickens located down the hill from the house. The wind was picking up and the thermometer was dropping rapidly. Before doing the chores, I put on my ski jacket, hat, and gloves. Getting the wood and feeding the horses took a little while with the rising wind and dropping temperature. I was concerned about the chickens. They were in their coop and completely protected from the wind, but several were molting (loosing their feathers) for some reason. With the thermometer now below zero and the wind chill maybe 60 below, I decided to move them to the garage. There were 70 bales of hay stored in the garage and the wood stove was going.
So, I donned my ski bibs along with the jacket, stocking hat, goggles and gloves, and walked directly into the teeth of that horrible wind to the coop. Two at a time, I ferried the chickens up the hill to safety where they could sleep with the numerous feral cats hiding in the garage, stoked the stove, and I was done for the night. The tractor with blade attached was also there waiting for action in the morning.
The wind howled and snow beat on the house all night. The walls kind of vibrated from the force of the wind, but it was new, and I had built it with an eye toward just this sort of storm. In the morning the storm abated, and I ventured out to assess the drifts. The end of the driveway hooked left 90 degrees to the garage doors. A drift lay across the drive in the lee of the garage up to the eaves, but I could get out on the north side. That snow had ended up in the huge drift. The driveway ran up hill to 327th and wasn’t too bad. I got the tractor cranked up in the -10 degree sunshine, and went to work.
By noon, the driveway was clear up to the street. The snow was piled on the already high pack at the bottom of the drive which by now was at least 10 feet deep. A path was dug over to the corral through chest high drifts. I tossed cracked oats to the little birds along that path as I carried the grain to the horses. The birds anticipated this in the morning and crowds of them gathered round. All my other paths were dug out, even to the chicken coop, but I left the chickens in the garage. They could hang out until it warmed up a little.
In the afternoon, I decided to saddle up my horse, Sugar, and try the road going east. He was feisty and eager to go, so we walked up the hill and started into the drifts. The snow quickly came up to his belly, then his chest, and finally the saddle. We only got about 200 feet, and he stopped, refusing to try anymore. Oh well. It was pretty cool for a few minutes riding in snow that practically buried the horse. We went back.
There was no sign of the County grader that day or the next, but then he came along, heading east into the deep snow. I walked up the hill to catch a ride with him and experience the removal operation. The operator had both rear axles locked and chains on all four tires. He had the blade set as high as it would go and sharply canted. The removal process proceeded with the grader pushing the top of the drift off until it bogged down in a couple of hundred feet, then backing up, lowering the blade, and doing it again, removing more snow until he reached the gravel. With good traction, he would charge into the drift with the blade up high and repeat the process. He would do this all day. He never did get all the way to 69 Highway as those drifts were 11 feet deep. That waited a couple of months and was finally cleared with a rubber tired loader. Eventually I could drive straight over to the highway with snow piled up higher than my 11 foot whip antennae on either side.
The entire winter was like this. I thought it would never end. The snow pile at the end of my driveway didn’t completely melt away until late June. Irises grew up through the snow pile and bloomed. Of course, it was much worse up in Nebraska where entire herds of cattle froze to death under the snow. We did not go skiing in Colorado that winter, but contented ourselves with ‘water’ snow skiing, being towed behind my International Scout around the roads and over the buried fences.
There were a whole series of winters similar to the one of ’78, but this was the worse, or most impressive if you will. In spite of the fears of ‘global warming’ it will happen again, and again, until the snow fails to melt away in the summer and the next ice age begins. It was a wild time.
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