Wednesday, Feb. 02, 2011
The Armistice Day Blizzard, November 1940
It was unseasonably mild the morning of Nov. 11, 1940. But within hours, a blizzard that would end up dumping more than 2 ft. (60 cm) of snow across Minnesota arrived, leaving 49 dead in the state and killing 150 nationwide. One newspaper story described the storm's gusts as "the winds of hell," and it left a path of devastation 1,000 miles (1,600 km) wide through the country, generating 20-ft. (6 m) snowdrifts and killing dozens of sailors on Lake Michigan and several hunters caught in the woods. For the most part, meteorologists failed to predict the massive blizzard, a major reason for the high number of deaths.