Baby, it's cold outside

Kansas City is going through its annual dose of genuine winter, with overnight lows dropping into the single digits and wild-chill factors dropping into the negatives. At work this morning, Michael Byars and I were comparing cold-weather stories.

As a person who grew up in South Dakota, my ace-in-the-hole in these discussions has always been the winter of 1979. I still remember riding to school in the front seat of my mom's Plymouth Fury and hearing the man on the radio announce that Sioux Falls had set a new record for days in a row without the temperature rising above zero degrees Farenheit. As I recall, it was around 60.

If there is any advantage at all to growing up in South Dakota, it is the wealth of "shitty weather" stories you take with you into gentler climes.

Even so, I'd come to think that the memories of my alternately frozen and heat-blasted childhood were just that: memories, subjected to the blurring and compression of passing time and "worsified," to borrow from Ogden Nash.

I went Googling for that record from 1979 and, in the process, discovered that the statistics prove that my memory was right. The weather sucked ENORMOUSLY when I was a kid.

Joe Sheehan from the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls (where his chick-magnet title is Hydrometeorological Technician) keeps track of these things in a series of chart- and fact-packed pages on the NWS site. (Tax dollars well freaking spent, I'd say.)

According to Joe's page on the 1970s, the decade that followed had not only the coolest average temperature on record but also, get this, "on average … warmer than normal summers and much colder winters." I toddled off to kindergarten in the fall of 1969 (which, by the way, had the coldest October on record).

Take it, Joe:

"…the winters of 1977-78 and 1978-79 were especially brutal. The average winter temperature in 1978-79 was 8.0 degrees, the coldest this century, while 1977-78 had an average winter temperature of 8.9 degrees, which was the second coldest winter this century. To underscore the frigid weather Sioux Falls experienced those two winters - 1977-78 had 52 days at or below zero (3rd most) with 30 days at or below -10 degrees (3rd most.)"

I also discovered that, before lighting out for the relative balminess of Missouri, I lived through December 1983 the coldest December on record:

"With deep snow cover at the beginning of December and a persistent jet stream pattern that brought one cold Arctic blast after another, a month that started out cold only got colder and it wasn't until after Christmas when temperatures moderated and even then temperatures remained will below normal." That'll put some frost on the old candy cane.

That December was the end of my first semester of college, which I spent plotting to transfer somewhere else. Over the Christmas beak I agreed to drive my friend John to Rapid City (about a 400 mile trip) and spend a day or two with his family before heading back. We left on the 20th in my 1967 Valiant. John was wearing a pair of hightops.

Once again, the fabulous Joe Sheehan:

On the 20th, from 3 to 4 inches of dry fluffy snow fell across the area which served as ammunition for the biggest Arctic blast of the month which occurred late on the 23rd and continued into the 24th.

And because we were lucky, we made it. But when I went to start Old Green, the engine wouldn't turn over. My uncle Loren came by and towed the car to the shop at his millwork company where we let it thaw for a day or two. A day or two later it started up and I made it home for New Years Eve.

That spring I applied and was accepted to two colleges. The choice was either William Jewell where I knew people and had a chance of going to England for my junior year, or a college in Santa Barbara where people studied on the beach. I opted for the chance at England.

What can I say; bad weather seems to be in my genes.