Among Other Things: No storms like this in recent years
By Paul Fugleberg
For Christmas my kids gave me a digital disc containing old 8mm movie film my mother had taken during her visits to Montana in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. I was amazed at the amount of snow we received during that period.
I checked my scrapbook looking for some of my old winter pictures during that time, many of which appeared in the Flathead Courier.
Between Christmas 1968 and New Year’s this area experienced a blizzard that lasted a couple days. I remember taking off for the office about 8 a.m. and it was a virtual whiteout.
I turned the corner from 12th Ave. E. to go toward town on Sixth St. and in the middle of the block I plowed into an invisible snowdrift and was stuck!
During that period we had to take the Courier pages to the Inter Lake plant at Kalispell where negatives were made, plates burned and the paper printed.
By Wednesday the storm had passed, the skies cleared, sun shone brightly, but the temperature registered around -21.
En route to Kalispell we stopped a couple times to take pictures between Big Arm and Elmo with Chief Cliff in the background, and again near Rollins where cattle were feeding on hay that had been spread on top of the snow. That picture ended up on the Associated Press wire and was printed over a wide area of the country.
Next day I drove down to the Minesinger Trail/US 93 intersection and snapped a photo of a county bulldozer attempting to clear a path through some massive snowdrifts.
While I still enjoy the challenge of the seasons that Montana offers, I’ll admit I don’t miss storms like those. We’ve not had one that bad since then.
Probably the closest occurred Christmas Eve and early Christmas Day in 1996. I was spending Christmas with the kids in Missoula. As we came out of the early Christmas Eve service at the Missoula Presbyterian Church, snow was just starting to fall. By morning it was a good two feet deep at Laurie and Pat’s house. We were supposed to go across town for breakfast at Ruth and Lance’s place. We got there in time for dinner!
Polson got a pretty good snow from that storm, too, but not nearly as much as Missoula.
Now that I’ve told about how much milder winters are in the Flathead and Mission valleys, watch out! A big one is probably on the way.
Last week Lorin Jacobson said the Polson-Flathead Historical Museum recently received a membership check from Burton L. Appleton, Ph.D. in Helena. He enclosed a photocopy of a newspaper picture of a young man dressed for cold weather with an overcoat and woolen cap. He thought it may have been taken in Rollins.
However, the background appears more likely it was in the Dayton area.
Oh, who was the man? An 18-year-old fellow named Walter Matthau!
Dr. Appleton said he found the picture in a vignette he had written titled “Butte and Blackjack: A Montana Civilian Conservatoion Corp adventure. The author gave the material to the Montana Historical Society and said he’s presently expanding somewhat on the piece.