A brutal December kills 500 and ruins $500 million in crops
December is supposed to be cold, sure, but temperatures on the order of last week's record breakers (—52° in Wisdom, Mont.; —14° in Indianapolis; 0° in Atlanta) are unseasonably, unreasonably cold. Readings in the Central Plains have been 36° below normal. Not since record keeping began had there been December days so cold in Chicago (—25°), New Orleans (14°) and dozens of other places in the country's heartland. Nor did the vicious cold just blow in, flaunt its power briefly and leave. The mercury went down and stayed down: stayed below zero for eight days in Omaha, ten days in Sioux Falls, S. Dak., three days in St. Louis. Much of the South suffered the most devastating cold in 20 years, and in the Great Plains and Midwest, weather historians saw parallels with dreadful pioneer winters. "This is decidedly the coldest December in Iowa," said State Climatologist Paul Waite. "It looks like it will beat 1876." Said National Weather Service Meteorologist Kenneth Bergman: "When the records are all in, this may be the worst December in 100 years for the whole U.S."
The worst in many ways. Crop losses, particularly those of citrus fruit in the Sunbelt, could total $500 million. Deaths directly and indirectly attributable to the two-week freeze numbered nearly 500. Tens of thousands of lives were disrupted.
Most of the subzero zone, which stretched from the Rockies east to the Alleghenies, began to warm up just after Christmas, prompting an epidemic of jokes about 15° "heat waves." Midweek, however, the bitter cold snapped back down the country's spine, setting records in cities such as Casper, Wyo. (—26°), Denver (15°) and Amarillo, Texas (—5°). Nor was the worst over for much of the Deep South. Tornadoes roared through Georgia and Florida on Thursday.
In Tampa, a few minutes away from fields of ruined fruit, a Government forecaster sounded a bit defensive. "It was practically impossible to forecast," said NWS Meteorologist David Rittenberry. The freeze, he added, "just came rolling right in." According to weather experts, high-altitude wind patterns shifted so that cold Arctic air, instead of warming gradually as it drifted east over the U.S., rushed due south.
Across the U.S., the Arctic downdraft froze bodies of water large and small, sometimes with dire results. The Snake River in Idaho was stopped up by a ten-mile-long ice jam, threatening floods, and Louisiana's Red River froze up for the first time this century. Coast Guard cutters freed a dozen Lake Erie freighters stuck in 12-ft.-high windrows of ice, and on the frozen Mississippi River near Keokuk, Iowa, 30 towboats pushing about 430 grain barges are trapped until spring. In the shallow Gulf of Mexico bays from Galveston to Port Isabel, Texas, tens of thousands of fish (speckled trout and redfish) died in 38° water.