What were the weather conditions?

This is a more difficult question to answer, but I’ll do my best.

First, you’ll need a basic understanding of certain components of weather. We’ll start with the basic things a blizzard needs. To get one you need three things; cold air at the surface, a lot of moisture, and lift. Just like any other storm you need warm air to rise over the cool air.

Next, you’ll need to understand pressure systems. There are two named types. Low and high. There is no way to measure them, so it is only a relative guess. The air from a high pressure system tends to flow to a low pressure system. In the case of a blizzard, two strong systems, a low and a high, become too close to each other.

The air tries to flow from the high pressure system into the low, but due to the Earth’s rotation the air turns to the right (if in the Northern Hemisphere) and the winds flow around the low pressure system instead of directly toward it.

In January of 1888, cold air pushed over the Canadian Rocky Mountains, bringing a cold wave that engulfed Montana, the Dakotas, and Minnesota. This, combined with an unseasonably mild mass of tropical air traveling from the south, created this terrible blizzard.

The cold wave caused temperatures to drop to -40 F and gale force winds to sweep across the prairies.  This clash of powerful weather systems had caused a monster blizzard.

Could there have been a different outcome?

It really depends on how you look at it.

At the time, weather calculations, as said earlier, were not as accurate. Meaning, someone could predict a hot and humid day and end up with one that is rainy and cool. It boils down to technology here. They just didn’t have the tools that we use now.

Even if they had predicted the blizzard, there wouldn’t have been much time to prepare, or even issue a warning. Remember, we are talking 1888, before they had fast cars or televisions or radios. Most of the people in this region were spread out or in small towns out of the way. By the time the message would have gotten to some places, it would have been too late, the blizzard might have already hit. And this is saying they did predict accurately.

Now, there have been some reports of unwise actions that might have cost lives. A few of them being that the teachers told the children, after the blizzard had hit, to get home as fast as they could. It might not have been smart to stay in the school house, but it definitely wasn’t to send the children out. With the freezing temperatures they only lasted minutes.

What is the Children’s Blizzard?

The Children’s Blizzard could probably be called one of the deadliest and most ferocious blizzards known to North America. The blizzard came suddenly and without warning on January 12, 1888. It had been an unusually warm day and the people of the Great Plains region of the United States had been completely unprepared.

This was a time before weather calculations were so accurate. This freak blizzard came quickly and dropped temperatures to the negatives. It occurred over the prairies of the upper Midwest (such as the Dakotas and Nebraska).

In an article of the Worst US Winter Storms (3) the Children’s Blizzard ranks 5^th, having caused the deaths of approximately 230 people, many of them children. The blizzard got its name from the many school children it trapped in school houses and killed from the quickly dropping temperatures and heavy screen of snow. It wasn’t the only deadly blizzard that year, but the first of two major blizzards in 1888, the second even topping the charts.