116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: 1957 bookended by snow
Storms were a hassle, but not blizzards
The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
The year 1957 began and ended with heavy snow in Eastern Iowa.
While the winter months that year were warmer than normal, the year was bookended by significant winter weather events, one of which was almost a blizzard.
The first came Wednesday, Jan. 9, 1957, when a 10-inch snowfall snarled traffic in downtown Cedar Rapids and other Iowa cities.
“The swirling snow, accompanied by sub-zero temperatures, struck hardest in a belt from Des Moines through Cedar Rapids and Davenport,” The Gazette reported the next day. “It ranged up to 11 inches deep by the time it quit Wednesday night.”
The storm, which peaked during rush hour, caused one of the worst downtown tie-ups in Cedar Rapids history.
The loop “was a sea of stalled vehicles. Intersections on First, Second and Third avenues, as far out as Seventh Street E, were almost hopelessly tangled,” the report said.
Although Des Moines’ snowfall was only 8 inches, the scene was similar. It took up to four hours for commuters to get home on slippery hills. Police there estimated 20,000 cars were stalled in the city. Caught in the capital city’s jam was Police Chief Howard Eide, who ran out of gas and had to be towed.
About blizzards
Although the storm was commonly referred to as a blizzard, it didn’t qualify, according to the Weather Bureau. To be a blizzard, a storm needs to have temperatures in the 20s or less, which it did. It needs heavy snow. Check. But a blizzard also needs winds of at least 32 mph. The wind never reached that velocity Jan. 9.
The word “blizzard” is relatively new to the English language.
Sir William A. Craigie, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary – who moved to Chicago in 1925 to become professor of English at the University of Chicago – said the word “blizzard” originally meant “giving an adversary a sharp retort.”
He said it didn’t acquire its definition as a heavy snowstorm until 1872, when it was used by an unnamed Iowa editor.
It’s possible, though, that the year was 1873, when an editor at the Dubuque Herald on Jan. 21 wrote: “We are having a ‘blizzard,’ and lest some of our readers not versed in etymology not understand the term, I shall endeavor to explain it by a practical illustration.
“Take a brisk wind of that searching quality that reaches every nook and comes burdened with icy particles so thickly that vision is impossible beyond a few paces, and not at all in the ‘wind’s eye,’ a thermometer at zero or indefinitely below, and you have a genuine northwestern ‘blizzard.’” (In 1873, Iowa was considered the nation’s northwest.)
More snow in ’57
The spring, summer and fall months of 1957 were uneventful, weather-wise. But 1957 wasn’t finished dumping snow on Eastern Iowa, although southern Iowa experienced a late March snowstorm that brought up to 16 inches of snow in places.
On Nov. 18, The Gazette reported the first heavy snow of the season. Combined with sleet, freezing rain and drizzle, the storm snarled highway traffic.
Always on the lookout for a good snowy weather picture before publication deadline, a Gazette photographer snapped one of a snow-covered Gazette truck parked behind in the back of the newspaper building at Third Avenue and Fifth Street SE. A deft finger clearly outlined “FIRST SNOW” on the truck’s windshield.
The winter weather stretched across a 75-mile-wide band from Lamoni in south-central Iowa to Dubuque. The snowfall ranged from 10 inches in southwest Iowa to 8 inches in the northeast.
But the year’s snowy contributions weren’t quite done.
The last snowfall of the year came unexpectedly at the 11th hour of the old year on Tuesday, Dec. 31.
“A blanket of snow ranging from one to five inches deep covered Eastern Iowa Tuesday, clogging highways and slowing holiday traffic,” according to The Gazette.
The Iowa City Press-Citizen reported, “Highways in the Iowa City area – and all over the state – were described as almost 100 percent snow packed. Some drifting was caused by blowing snow, which also limited visibility.”
Cedar Rapids police received 22 accident reports caused by slick streets on Dec. 31.
Not all of the snow news was bad news. The Gazette reported, “All roads in Bever Park were closed to provide sledding facilities.”
More snow was expected in the first days of the new year.
It was a fitting end to a year that began with a storm that bordered on being a blizzard.
Comments: D.fannonlangton@gmail.com
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