Posted on 10/07/2013 6:29:58 PM PDT by Olog-hai
A record-breaking storm that dumped 4 feet of snow in parts of western South Dakota left ranchers dealing with heavy losses, in some cases perhaps up to half their herds, as they assess how many of their cattle died during the unseasonably early blizzard.
Meanwhile, utility companies were working to restore power to tens of thousands of people still without electricity Monday after the weekend storm that was part of a powerful weather system that also buried parts of Wyoming and Colorado with snow and produced destructive tornadoes in Nebraska and Iowa. At least four deaths were attributed to the weather, including a South Dakota man who collapsed while cleaning snow off his roof. …
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Cattle can take wet, they can take wind, but they can’t typically handle both at once.
So you get them some windbreaks. Typical cattle operators will bring cattle down out of the higher or more remote pastures to where they have improvements to over-winter the cattle. Above all, they need forage - lots of fiber in the forage, too, because that’s how cattle survive cold weather. Their digestion process of breaking down fiber in their food creates heat.
The trouble was, this storm was wet, it was moderately cold, and the winds were up over 60MPH. Cattle that are wet, out in the open and have their forage snowed over are going to be dead in a couple of days. They simply must have a way to get out of the wind if they’re to survive a storm like this - and then they must have some hay supplied to them in the second day, to keep them alive as the snow melts.
These cattlemen are suffering from a real failure in prediction by NOAA and their local WX forecasters. Some of them were in no way ready to bring in their herds, but some might have been able to get some hay pre-positioned to mitigate the losses.
Now, here’s a little dark humor in this situation:
It was only last Wednesday when here in Wyoming, as we were watching the Rapid City TV stations, the RC forecasters were talking about what their weather models were churning out. The RC/SD TV forecasters (not terribly excitable people, on the whole - excitable people don’t last long in the Dakotas’ winters) said that the models were predicting over 4 feet of this filthy, heavy wet cement posing as snow.
The Rapid City weather folks said that they didn’t believe the models. They just hadn’t seen the set-up in the weather patterns for 4 feet of snow, which would have been equivalent to over 4” of rainfall. That doesn’t happen over wide areas in this country.
We got about 9 to 14” of this crap over here just east of the Big Horn Mtns in Wyoming. It fairly hit the model forecasts - and here, the models have been mis-overestimating snowfall for the last five years. We easily got 1.5” of moisture out of this storm.
As the storm progressed eastwards, the snowfall kept going, and going and going. They got upwards of four feet. The models came out about right - except for the timing, which was a bit later than predicted.
Here in Wyoming, there are people hauling away trees all over the place due to how many trees got snapped in half or seriously pruned by the snowfall.
I miss Randy’s Pizza Barrel. It was the best. It is now the Golden Phoenix Chinese restaurant. It’s good, too.
You wouldn’t believe how Rapid has grown and changed over the past few years.
Go back and read up on the winter of 1886 to 1887 in Wyoming, Montana and eastern MT.
It was what inspired Charley Russell to write the postcard “Waiting for a Chinook” that launched his career.
Here in Wyoming, there have been winters that killed 10’s of thousands of sheep. Much of Johnson County smelled for months of rotting flesh come spring after one of these winters.
So the cattle are still alive? Go buy ’em then.
Cattle are not migratory animals.
If cattle could predict every disaster, then not a single one would be killed by other catastrophic phenomena, e.g. volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes et al.
Duh!!
Lots of rain followed by four feet of snow did break records. But yes, the latter is seasonable, even if the volume is historic.
That winter was tough all over, my grandfather told of removing the wheels from wagons and mounting runners on them so they could take them down the creek to get to town for supplies, impassable otherwise. In central North Carolina. Frozen bodies of water during winter is not unusual, but it’s a good way to drown, it seldom gets thick enough to support the weight of a man, let alone horse and wagon.
Preppers’ PING!!
There is no silver lining. My aunt (by marriage) family was hit really hard, losing almost a half a million dollars in cattle (over 200 head). This is a real hit for many ranchers who live on thin margins.
You see any pictures of the dead cattle? They aren’t migratory? Ever hear of a cattle drive cowboy? You might want to read some history about cattlemen.
Were not talking about physics reading hear.
They go to the fence lines, get stuck and the snow drifts over them. They can survive flooding, but the blizzards can be bad. Regular snowfall is survivable, it is the wind with the blizzards that is rough.
If it is light snow, you make sure their noses are clear so they don’t suffocate, also hay bale walls provide some protection. My family would move all the cattle to the ‘yard’ (160 acres) and make sure they didn’t suffocate. Cattle can stand cold alright but blowing snow can be a real problem.
Was there no weather-person predicting LOTS and LOTS of rain? Those clouds off in the distance, a-comin' this way HAD to mean something. Hard to believe that the modern gadgets to forecast the weather were SO FAR wrong.
Oh well, their insurance will pay up. And, the price of meat will rise. "Poor" farmers and ranchers AREN'T going to lose.
Stay safe. My mother is far enough west she didn’t get snow but the wind blew some trees down in town including one right outside her house - she was lucky it didn’t blow into her roof.
I think the rural folk are better prepped than those in Rapid though. Everyone where my mom lives is a prepper - just part of living in rural SD.
The ranchers didn’t KNOW that the cattle wouldn’t survive “a couple of days”? Where were they?
Amen to that.
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