4D., I don't know what part of MO you are in, but an uncle of mine lived in Eldon from maybe early 1950's until his death maybe 15 or so years ago. He helped during an extreme ice storm which put dairies in a hard place due to no electricity to milk the cows.......for quite some time. I don't recall if they were hand milking them, or getting generators to the farms, but that was before all this talk of global warming.....or the next ice age being imminent.
I know western SD and most of the nations mid-section and west was in a terrible drought in the 1930's.....then had some record wet years in the early '40's, as having recently seen a photo of a lady in a kayak on the main street of Midland, SD in 1940 from flooding on the Bad River nearby.
Of course, history books tell us that SD has, in various era's had an ice age with glaciers crossing the eastern part of the state, and another time, at least the western part of the state was a vast sea. Not sure if they were connected, but there also was such a sea over the state of Mississippi. At another time, it must have been a tropical forest in western SD, for instance, as the dinosaur skeletons found out here attest.
Personally, I prefer our instability of the current centennial or so of weather to either of the past scenarios' series of 'climate changes' when modern civilization surely wasn't to blame for the severe changes. While some of the current 'wild life' creatures cause some problems from time to time, I do prefer coyotes, deer, and wild turkeys to the dinosaurs!
It seems logical that there will continue to be 'climate change' from time to time, and maybe volcano's, tsunami's, and other natural extremes should bear at least a portion of the blame, shouldn't they?
mrj