Posted on 01/05/2010 7:04:26 AM PST by SwinneySwitch
What is a norther? J. Frank Dobie wrote that weather forecasters never use the term, preferring cold wave or cold spell, but it is a term familiar to all Texans. Northers, said Dobie, blow the world inside out and freeze the lining; they are cold enough to freeze the horns off a brass billy goat. Another Texas writer from the 19th century, Alex Sweet, said the thermometer falls rapidly during a norther, sometimes 40 degrees in an hour. A man in Austin, wrote Sweet, “saw the thermometer fall three feet in two seconds — off a nail.”
Whether they are called cold waves, northers or blizzards, the worst to hit Texas, in the recorded memory of man, came on in the middle of a Saturday night on Feb. 13-14, 1899. It swept down into Texas and within hours temperatures dropped to the lowest the state had ever seen. It was fiercely cold. The temperatures are hard to believe, but they were well-reported at the time. In the Panhandle, temperatures plunged to 31 degrees BELOW zero at Tulia. The temperatures dropped to 23 degrees BELOW at Abilene, 16 degrees below at Denison, 11 degrees below at Dallas, and four below at San Antonio. The oasis of warmth in the state was at Corpus Christi, which registered a balmy 11 degrees above zero.
It was stone cold around the country. Trains were stalled, causing “coal famines” in the frozen cities. “There is great suffering,” the Caller reported, “especially among the poor in New York and other large cities where the cold is the worst known in decades.” Some people were found frozen to death while others were burned to death. Potbellied stoves, the main source of heat in many homes, were loaded up with coal, if the occupants had it, or wood. The fires were stoked until the stoves glowed red-hot. There were tragic accidents caused by people trying to get warm by crowding in too close. In Corsicana, a 10-year-old girl burned to death when she stood too close to a hot stove. In Alice, a woman was burned to death when her dress brushed against a stove and ignited. There were similar stories from all over. The Laredo Times reported that many thousands of lambs and other livestock were frozen to death on the range. The San Antonio Express reported that “for the first time in human memory, the San Antonio River was turned into a cake of ice of sufficient thickness to hold human weight.”
Capt. Andrew Anderson, who came to Corpus Christi with his parents in 1852, got caught in that terrible blizzard.
“We were 50 miles down Laguna Madre (when the storm hit). We were iced in. The Laguna had frozen over. It was snug and warm in the cabin (of the boat) all night, but in the morning we couldn’t get the cabin door open. By chopping with a hatchet we were able to open it, and what a sight we beheld. There was snow and ice over the sails and rigging. It was impossible to move them. After much beating and shaking of the canvas, however, we were able to hoist the sails. Then we went to work on the anchor, and finally got that loose. It was so intensely cold we had to stop every little while and get a drink of hot coffee. Finally we started out with a head wind. We got up 25 or 30 miles, as the wind was rather favorable, and anchored at sundown. We had to climb the hoops around the masts to get the sails down that night . . . It was about noon when we reached the (bay) and the wind died down. We had to pole in from the beacon to the wharf.
“During this same terrible cold spell, a fellow in an open boat with vegetables from Ingleside landed in front of my house (on Water Street). There was so much steam from the water he couldn’t see anything, and so he anchored. He was so cold he didn’t see how he could live if he remained on the boat. So he jumped overboard, thinking he would just as soon freeze to death in the water as in the boat. After swimming a ways he was able to walk. Reaching shore, he asked me to go out to the boat and get another fellow off, who had remained behind. The bay was frozen out 30 or 40 feet from shore; my skiff was on top of the ice, and the oars were about six inches thick with the ice ... . We found the man on the boat nearly gone, just sitting huddled up, covered with canvas; he didn’t respond when we called to him. We pulled him off the boat and tumbled him into the skiff and made for the shore in a hurry. He just lay there in the skiff, appearing to be dead. But on shore they put some whiskey in him first, and then some coffee, and brought him to.”
The Caller correspondent at Alice reported it was five degrees above zero. At Tarpon (Port Aransas), the boat harbor froze over and people walked on the ice between the boats. Thousands of frozen fish, stunned by the cold, lined the shore. At Corpus Christi, according to the Caller, the blizzard killed all the cabbage and garden truck around the city ... It killed the city’s oleanders ... It froze meat in the market; saws had to be used to cut it ... It froze vinegar in bottles, ink in ink stands, and bluing in the stores (breaking the bottles) ... froze the combs off chickens and froze “a bunch of goats to death back of town” ... froze the river solid at Nuecestown (near Calallen); people could walk from bank to bank . . . froze Nueces Bay from shore to shore; a man who delivered mail from Rockport to Corpus Christi by horseback rode his horse across the frozen Nueces Bay ... It froze Corpus Christi Bay out past the piers; fishing boats at the wharves were encased in ice; boys walked on the ice as far as the Central Wharf bathhouse (past where the L-head is today) ... It froze seagulls, which fell like stones. The bay-freezing blizzard of 1899 was surely the coldest weather that Corpus Christi had ever seen.
Murphy Givens is the former Viewpoints Editor of the Caller-Times. E-mail: givens.murphy@gmail.com.
Wow, that sounds very similar to the “snow bomb” that we had here in NC, in January 2000. Stalled, coastal nor’easter with a secondary low. Wilmington NC, subtropical with palm trees and alligators, got 25”. Roofs were collapsing. Strange storm.
Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
in 1972 in Nocona Tx...we were running a high school track meet in early february.......at 11 am I was running the prelims for the 100 yd dash ( 10.3 ,did not make the finals) and at 5:15 I also ran the mile......
..at 11 am it was 81 degrees....at 5:15 it was white out snowing w/ 20 mph winds
Was I dreaming or was I stranded in Dallas in the mid 80s when a ice storm hit?
We had a New Years Eve ice storm on 12/31/79. I went to the Cotton Bowl that year, on New Years Day and it was cold. Coldest sporting event I’ve ever been attended. Didn’t have power for about a week.
I think that's what I saw at Port Bolivar back in the winter of 67 or 68. It came in so hard it literally blew the tide out within an hour. That's what my aunt called it, I think.
“Northers, said Dobie, blow the world inside out...”
You just can’t make this stuff up.
We hit 4F back in the mid 80s in Austin. I remember getting snowed in on a trip to Corpus in Feb ‘85 too. The bridges over the ship channel were closed.
Military folk will tell you that Amarillo is the coldest place on earth.........
...there is an ole joke of a family of farmers right on the Texas Oklahoma border.....These Okie farmers were generations deep farming when a federal survey team came by to announce these farmers were not Okies but in fact Texans as the border line was inaccurate to which the farmer replied.....”Thank God, I couldn’t take another of one those Oklahoma winters”
LOL! Good one.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=galveston+bay+froze+over+in+1899&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
Some mentions amongst these
It was 21 here in Kerrville this morning. The birds are ice-skating on the bird baths. brrrrrrrrrrrr.
Maybe the reason that the freezing of Galveston Bay in 1899 was not properly recorded was because of Issac Cline, the incompetent weather man who told the residents that there was no storm coming in Sept 1900.
21 in Kerrville? Wow. That’s phenomenal.
Heard it’s supposed to get all the way down to 20 in SA for Thursday. That’s amazing!
Whether they are called cold waves, northers or blizzards, the worst to hit Texas, in the recorded memory of man, came on in the middle of a Saturday night on Feb. 13-14, 1899.Thanks SwinneySwitch.
It’s not an imitation. It’s the real deal.
Thx.
That’s my perception and opinion, too.
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