Halloween Blizzard Revisited

It’s funny how some memories remain distinctly ingrained in your conscious thoughts while the more insignificant memories are often sent out to pasture in some distant realm of the brain, never to be revisited again. On Halloween of 1991 much of Minnesota was hit with an unseasonably early and harsh blizzard. This Halloween marked the 25th anniversary of the infamous (or famous if you happened to be a kid in 1991) Halloween Blizzard. If you were in Minnesota and were able to retain conscious thought at the time, you’d remember exactly where you were and what you were doing. I’m going to do my best to illustrate for you how the snow day of all snow days unfolded through the lens of an 11 year old boy.

Let me preface this story by stating that Halloween is a good time in Minnesota. The cooling weather and freshly bare trees align perfectly with the spooky sentiment that the holiday so robustly casts upon us. The prelude to Halloween that year was no exception. School, homes, malls and restaurants were decked out in the usual black and orange scary decor. Haunted houses, hayrides and pumpkin patches flourished while the grocery stores peddled mass quantities of cavities and diabetes in the form of fun size candy bars. In short, it was a great time to be a kid. 
October 31, 1991 started just like any other day. As an 11 year old 5th grader, I recall still having a bit of a euphoric hangover from the Twins defeat of the Atlanta Braves in a hard fought, seven game series to win the World Series. I had a vested interest in the Twins because I was fortunate enough to have attended game 1 of the series when my dad won tickets through his union, and because I was a kid in the ’90s, which meant it was my civic duty. I not only followed the Twins, I memorized all of the team and individual statistics on a daily basis. This was done courtesy of the newspaper as we were still the better part of a decade away from worthwhile internet, but I digress. 

On the school bus conversation was split between World Series talk and costume selections. The majority of students had elected to dress in costume because the elementary school I attended held an annual Halloween parade outside for all the community to attend. I had decided to be a California Raisin that year and although the bulky getup was a bit of a pain in the ass to navigate, the sheer ridiculousness of it made it worth it. As morning progressed, I remember thinking that I was going to soon regret my costume choice because of the wintry mix of precipitation that was now beginning to fall.

As luck would have it, we were notified that due to the inclement weather, the parade was now going to be held indoors. The snow was starting to stick and initial estimates of 1-3″ were now being revised to 3-5″. During the parade, the snow showed no signs of letting up as the students quickly turned their focus from the successfully improvised parade to the small snowstorm that was now flogging the terrain just outside of the classroom. Kids were abuzz with plans on how they would spend their evening in the freshly constructed wonderland and even the teachers, who toiled so tirelessly to create the parade, were showing small signs of excitement. They didn’t seem to care that the students had begun to shift virtually all of their attention to the blizzard, and I distinctly recall one teacher spreading a rumor that new estimates were now 7-12″ and that the possibility of school being canceled was very real.

As we impatiently rode the bus home it was now apparent that, at the very least, there would be a delay the next morning. Within a minute of getting home I was hastily digging through the winter attire in the back of the closet. No less than 90 seconds later I had located a snowmobile suit, hats, gloves and boots. My California Raisin costume was permanently laid to rest and I was no sooner out the door to play with my best friend Ricky.

After dinner Ricky and I concluded that if we were to go trick or treating, we would need a change of costume to accommodate the weather. Ricky came up with the idea of going as hunters decked out in blaze orange winter suits. This fit the bill perfectly as we were able to keep warm and trudge comfortably through the 6+ inches of snow in our boots.

Ricky’s dad volunteered to take us as our parents, along with every other parent in Minnesota, were still terrorized by the possibility of a random abduction. (Just two years earlier an 11 year old boy named Jacob Wetterling was randomly kidnapped at gunpoint. The case went unsolved for 27 years until the Jacob’s abductor eventually confessed and led investigators to the remains, doing so while in custody on child pornography charges. See Jacob Wetterling for an accurate account of how the events to this tragic case unfolded). Determined to get our usual, strenuously heavy bounty, we plodded through the now 8+ inches of snow, which was now falling at an even faster rate than before. At this point a school cancellation was no longer a possibility, it was a certainty. After about an hour and a half, we deemed ourselves satisfied and decided to reconvene in the morning.

On the morning of Friday, November 1, 1991, I sprung out of bed shortly after 7:00 a.m. and immediately ran upstairs to survey the aftermath. Staring out the window on the deck I saw over two feet of snow piled atop the picnic table, which would now sit outside for the remainder of the season as a victim of the unseasonably early snowstorm. I looked over to see my parents reading the paper over their morning coffee and then the sheer magnitude began to sink in. My dad never missed work so I asked, “They even canceled work dad?” “Yeah, and tell Ricky not to call so goddamn early. People are trying to sleep!” Apparently Ricky has called the house at 5:30 a.m. to relay the news that school was canceled. When nobody answered the phone, the answering machine on my parents’ nightstand picked up and audibly fielded a call of my friend screaming ecstatically, announcing that school had been officially canceled. The tirade lasted about a half minute, which was just enough time to disrupt my parents’ sleep cycle and derail any hopes of them sleeping in.

After scarfing down my three daily bowls of cereal, I quickly dressed and embarked on my journey to find Ricky. The snow was 30 inches deep and proved to be extremely challenging to forge through, especially in the much deeper drifts. I can still vividly recall the sheer number of people outside that morning. Neighbors were out in droves attempting to clear their driveways with a lackadaisical sense of urgency. Kids jubilantly climbed the emerging snowbanks with their sleds in tow as the adults chatted and joked with each other while patiently awaiting their turn to use Rick’s big 10 horsepower snowblower or Darryl’s John Deere plow. The overwhelming sense of community emitted from the old neighborhood is something that will never be lost on me and it was on full display that day as the blue collar, middle class residents eagerly rolled up their sleeves to help dig one another out.

The storm, however, wasn’t without consequence. Numerous fatalities and countless injuries racked up from a record shattering number of crashes. Hundreds of thousands of customers lost power while the treacherous roads made it impossible for the EMT’s to respond in a timely fashion. When it was all said and done, Minnesotans were buried for days on end and burdened with a costly tab that soared well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The storm pummeled Minnesota all the way from Mankato to Duluth, where some areas saw over 3 feet of snow locally. The historically low center of pressure responsible for the storm traveled eastward, eventually colliding with even more volatile weather conditions, and in doing so, created the perfect storm-yes, that Perfect Storm starring George Clooney and Marky Mark.

While it feels like it happened just yesterday, it was in fact, a different era altogether. This became all too real after stumbling across the front page of the newspaper dated November 2, 1991. The larger blocky vehicles that lay stranded in the cover photo were reminiscent of a time when video games could only keep our attention for an hour, tops. It was a time when kids were tasked with meeting up and tracking each other down via landline conversations, voicemails left on answering machines and, more often than not, sheer intuition. And even though we constantly fell off of our bikes and tape decks would occasionally chew up our favorite cassette, we got along just fine a quarter century ago.
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