jodywy said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl6Iz4dXGdg&app=desktop
I haven't looked at your second post, jody,but I will. Thanks for posting these.
My dad was part of the 'mobile strike force' as he was a dozer operator. He told about this storm and said that they
got lumber to build cabs out of wood for the dozer operators so they could stay a bit warmer. The cats ran 24 hours a day,
they didn't dare shut them off.
Mr. FH said his dad helped haul the hay that was brought in to the cattle.
I was only a bit over 3 years old but I remember later on seeing in the movie theater the drops of hay out of the planes for the cattle.
It was a terrible time.
We went through a Good Friday storm of 1973 near Buffalo Wyoming. It stormed for 3 days, temperature was zero with 60 mph winds.
We had drifts that lasted til the 4th of July. The kids could climb on top of the snow and touch the phone lines. We lost cattle, lost a
milk cow, but it still was nothing like 1949, or maybe due to better machinery, we were better able to handle it. A 3-day storm
is devastating, regardless the date. I remember our CattleWomen club compiled stories of what happened in the Good Friday Storm and
one lady from Gillette who raised sheep, had 1200 in a shed as they were going to shear them. The shed sealed up with the snow and those sheep
all somothered. She said the ones on the bottom were cooked from the heat from the ones on top. They dug pits and used front end loaders to
bury the sheep.Our neighbor had sheep out on the range and they started looking for them, they looked for steam coming out of a hole and would start digging. They dug a lot of sheep out that way but many perished. It was a dreadful time for stockmen.
Buffalo had another terrible storm in 1984. Killed all the birds and many sheep then as well. We were in SW Montana by then, so
didn't personally experience that one.