Sunday 15 Jan 2006
12 noon

No sooner did I say we’ve hardly had winter, than we get a big dump of snow. A foot of the fluffy stuff has come down since last night and there is no sign of it letting up. Reports on the radio yesterday predicted stormy weather for southern and central (where we live, the “parkland”) Saskatchewan; looks like they were right.

I would be completely at peace with it if I didn’t have to drive to Grandma’s, 20 minutes down the highway, to pick Everett up.

It’s still only 5C below; can’t complain about that. But am not sure whether I should brave the road just yet or not.

If I recall correctly, I was in Grade 1 during the blizzard of 1965, or was it 1966? We were driving on the highway —- Mom and Dad, me and Karen — was baby Cameron with us? I don’t recall — on our way from the little town where we lived, to our home town. This would have been a frequent weekend trip, as it was considerably less than an hour’s drive away and both sets of my grandparents lived there.

Somewhere along the way, the snow had picked up so suddenly and so intensely that before we knew it we had to pull over and stop, and were soon in a line of cars stuck in the drifts along the side of the road. We sat in our car for about six hours, I’m told, until we were rescued by men on ski-doos. I remember Dad and I, passengers on one, he facing forward and I facing backward. My biggest worry was that he might fall off, and I held tightly onto him just in case.

A number of families, including ours, were taken to a farm home in the area (one of many that took in stranded travellers that weekend), where we were “snowed in” for several days. The lady of the house served wonderful meals, Mom told me last year. She was still amazed that there was enough food in the house to feed that many people so well for so long.

My memory of the stay in that house is of playing bingo with two little girls who were a year or two older than me. I could never figure out how they found the numbers so fast, as I didn’t know you looked under the letter that was called before each number. Neither of them told me, either. It probably never occurred to them that I was that dense.

After this conversation with Mom, I realized that one of the tellers at my local credit union was the little girl whose home we stayed in. She’s the little girl we played bingo with, fancy that. I made sure to remind her and to pass along what Mom had said about admiring her mother.

The following information comes from this website.

“Blizzards are a notorious feature of winters on the Prairies. They are characterized by intense windchills (above 1600 W/m2), strong winds (speeds of 40 km/h or more), and a fine, blinding snow which reduces visibility to 1 km or less. To qualify as a Saskatchewan blizzard, these conditions must last for 4 hours or more. The amount of new snow may be negligible, but the winds whirl the falling and drifting snow so fiercely that people and animals easily lose their sense of direction and become lost. Freezing temperatures, intensified by the wind, have been known to freeze whole livestock herds at a corner of a field or in snow-filled barns, and even in modern days, people have lost their way home and been frozen to death.

Snowstorms and blizzards are easily the most feared and perilous of all winter storms. January is the month when these storms are most likely to occur and they happen most frequently in southwestern Saskatchewan. Swift Current and Regina average 30 blizzard hours a year and five full-fledged blizzards (4 hours or more) in every two years. Northward the frequency of blizzards is much less. At Saskatoon, blizzard hours average 6 a year, but only once in two years does a full-fledged four-hour winter blow occur. Most blizzards in the south last an average of 12 hours, although 48-hour blizzards have been recorded.

The most memorable blizzard in Saskatchewan's history occurred in February 1947. For 10 days all highways into Regina were blocked. Railway officials declared conditions the worst in Canadian rail history. One train was buried in a snowdrift 1 km long and 8 m deep. Another paralysing blizzard lasted 4 days in February 1978. Snowdrifts reached Regina roof-tops, yet only a trace of new snow fell at the airport.

Prairie Blows

Saskatchewan is not the windiest region in Canada; that distinction is shared by the coasts. However, open as it is to the free sweep of winds from any direction, the province does experience strong average wind speeds. Because the terrain is relatively flat and the land is largely cropped or in pasture, obstacles that impede the wind are lacking. For this reason, winds are generally lighter in the more northerly treed parkland than in the open prairie.”