[Vision2020] Recalling Winters Past

[Tom Hansen]

Those of you that have expressed your experiences with the Moscow Winter of
1968/69 are right.  What we have here this winter barely qualifies as a
spring day in the park compared to Winter 1968/69.

 

Video: Remembering the Snow

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/video/archive.asp?postID=337

 

WSU Students Take Advantage of Snow Day

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/media/video/?ID=1500

 

 

A look back at some of the previous Great White Winters in Spokane.



 

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Recalling Winters Past

Jim Camden

Staff writer

February 3, 2008

 

The snow was falling earlier this week, the drifts were getting impressive
and television anchors were using tones befitting a wintery apocalypse.

 

But it wasn't long before somebody said something like: "You think this is
bad? Jeez, this is nothing. Why, back in the day ..."

 

That got the staff at The Spokesman-Review wondering. How was this stacking
up to past winters our readers remember?

 

So we asked. Here are excerpts from some of the responses.

 

 

Winters of 1950 and 1964

 

Bill Wilson of Moses Lake thought back to 1950, when he was a student at the
University of Washington.

 

"It got down to zero - coldest ever for Seattle. I went home to visit for
the weekend in Yakima; the weather there was 25 below. That's the coldest I
ever remember for either Yakima or Moses Lake, where I moved in 1982."

 

As for snow, Wilson recalls 36 inches falling in Yakima over about three
days in 1964. "I was a child welfare social worker then. A state trooper and
his wife were due that weekend from the coast to pick up a child they were
adopting from a foster home. They came via train (before Amtrak, I believe).
I picked them up at the train station and drove them in my Volkswagen beetle
to the foster couple's isolated farmhouse. Almost no cars were on the road,
but I had snow tires and excellent traction. 

 

"But when we came to the road leading to the farmhouse, it was totally
blocked with huge snowdrifts, so by prearrangement the foster father drove
across an open field with the little girl on his lap on a high-wheeled
tractor to where the adoptive couple and I were waiting.

 

"We made it back into town to a motel where the couple and the little girl
spent the night, and they took the train home the following morning." 

 

 

Winter of 1968-69

 

The winter of 1968-69 seems to be one of the most famous, or infamous, for
Inland Northwest residents.

 

Sue Hallett of Colfax recalled coming back to Gonzaga University after
Christmas that year, when she was a freshman.

 

"I lived at Catherine-Monica, a dorm on campus, and, raised in Yakima, I had
never seen so much snow before in my life. Coming back to campus in the
middle of the night from the Northern Pacific train depot after Christmas,
the whole city looked like 'Dr. Zhivago.'

 

"Somebody had abandoned an old car in front of our dorm and gradually it
disappeared into the enormous berm of snow built up by the plows. I can
remember climbing up and over the berm with my friend Michelle one day on
our way to class. She reminded me that the old car was still there, under
the snow. I didn't believe her, but, sure enough, as May approached, the
roof of the old car re-emerged into view. Students were still heading off
for ski trips as we got ready to go home for the summer."

 

 

Winters of 1968, 1992 and 1996

 

Tom Peacock of Cheney wrote that he recalled the winters of 1968 and 1992 in
Walla Walla as having significant snow, but the one snow fall that's at the
center of his recollections was in the spring of 1996.

 

"We had received a fairly substantial amount of snow in the valley and the
mountains over a three-day period and then came the Chinook that melted it
all. In fact, the streams and rivers were overwhelmed by the melt. My first
indication came as I was watching the Weather Channel and they were focusing
on Waitsburg, as having serious flooding issues. At the time I was a
construction laborer and was off for the winter. I had my dad drive me up to
Waitsburg to see what could do to help and was immediately put to work.

 

"It was really quite an eye-opening experience over the next few months, I
went back to work almost immediately as the company I had been working for
was hired by the city of Dayton for cleanup work there, and also by the city
of Walla Walla to repair the city's main water transmission line that
carries water from the Watershed in the Blues down to the intake plant on
the edge of town. The days just after the flooding were also quite
interesting hearing all the rumors going around about bridges being held up
by cranes, cars being plucked out of the river by cranes, etc."

 

---------------------------------------

 

Stay safe.  Stay warm.

 

Seeya round town, Moscow.

 

Tom Hansen

Moscow, Idaho

 

 

***********************************
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.

- Author Unknown
***********************************

 

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