The great November blizzard that knocked out Iowa's apples

Monday's burst of snow delighted some and demoralized others. Like it or not, the big W is coming. All you can do is grin and bundle. And book a spring break trip.

If that autumn snow made you cranky, I understand. Every year, winter gets a little bit harder to take. But one great feature of Iowa's, um, broadly variable weather is that it was probably a whole lot worse on some previous occasion.

So cheer up, and take heart. At least it wasn't like 1940.

My folks and, likely, their folks before them, talked often of the great Armistice Day blizzard. The monster storm killed 150 people in the upper Midwest, along with countless livestock. It might be tough to imagine for us, living in our time of wall-to-wall snowstorm coverage,but the 1940 blizzard was as surprising as it was ferocious. Among those who died in the storm were duck hunters who set out on a holiday morning amid 50-degree temps to bag loads of arriving ducks. What the they didn't know was that the ducks were fleeing a killer storm that would, by later that afternoon, trap many hunters in icy rain, blinding snow and plunging temperatures.

My dad was just 8, but remembers it well. For one thing, the ice storm and snow kept his family from attending the much-anticipated Armistice Day barbecue in East Peru. Big disappointment. He also recalls the devastation of apricot trees on their southern Iowa farm. And for duck hunters, including my dad, it's no surprise that the 1940 storm proved to be a cautionary tale that stuck with them.

Those apricot trees weren't the only agricultural casualties. I've heard plenty about the snow, ice and hunters, but I didn't realize that the Armistice Day blizzard basically delivered a knock-out punch to Iowa's once large apple industry. Kurt Michael Friese summarizes:

A report by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at ISU has the numbers:

Not everyday a single weather event dramatically alters a state's agricultural economy for decades to come.

So, see, that skiff of frosting we received Monday wasn't so bad. If you have any family recollections of 1940's big storm, please share.