Surviving the blizzard: How we did it

Take several days of freezing fog, treat the hoar frost with a drizzle of rain, then watch as scores of overburdened power poles snap under the weight. Pour on a three-day weekend snow storm, top it off with winds of nearly 50 mph and you have a recipe for misery in eastern Montana.

Highways drifted over; cars were stuck in snowbanks and slid off of icy roads; schools were closed; sporting events were canceled; flights were grounded. Some 1,200 to 2,000 people huddled for days in homes that were dark and cold. This storm packed everything an old-fashioned blizzard should.

Fortunately, when the sun returned on Monday, there were no deaths or injuries reported.

"Here's what's so hardy about Montana – the majority of people know how to deal," said Tanja Fransen, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Glasgow. "Most people took the storm seriously. Many changed their travel plans."

Valley County had its full share of this winter visitation, an event that the National Weather Service in Glasgow ranks in the top 10 of the last 30 years or so because of its impact and duration. They saw it coming days before. On Tuesday, Jan. 19, they issued a winter storm warning for the weekend. On Friday, Jan. 22, the warnings had advanced to predictions of blizzard conditions by Saturday. They were right.

It began with three days of heavy fog Tuesday through Thursday, Jan. 19 to 21, just more fog in a month that has had 17 days of it. A freezing drizzle on Friday made the road surfaces slippery, and it gradually turned to snow.

Those power poles were losing the battle with ice and phone calls were piling up about outages. Power was sporadic countywide from Friday through Sunday and in the north country, some people around Opheim were without electricity from Thursday through Tuesday.

On Saturday, it snowed on and off during the morning. Up at the weather service office on the hill, they thought maybe it was not going to be as bad as predicted, according to Fransen.  Then the storm kicked in with a steady heavy snowfall that lasted through Sunday. The wind picked up on Saturday too, and by Sunday it was slinging the snow along at 48 mph.

In total, Glasgow got 9.8 inches of snow with this storm. The most reported was 19 inches in Zortman and in south Wibaux County, where semis on the Interstate were hitting drifts and getting stopped cold. Snowdrifts up to 20 feet were reported in Garfield County. Roads on the Montana Department of Transportation map were red – closed – in all directions along the Hi-Line, south from Malta, south of Fort Peck Lake and southeast to North Dakota. The only exception was U.S. 2.

Some people reportedly went around road closures and got stuck. According to Fransen, the Prairie County Sheriff's Office rescued people from five vehicles. In North Dakota on Sunday some people were told to wait it out; crews would not be risked to come after them.

Utility crews were stretched to the maximum and beyond, trying to deal with the widespread need. NorVal Electric Cooperative and NorthWest Energy repair people worked nonstop. Road crews with the MDT, Valley County and each city and town plowed all weekend, seeing drifts form as fast as they could clear them.

Rick Seiler, the Valley County road superintendent, said they finally pulled county crews off the roads Sunday night, just keeping one plow ready to clear the way for an ambulance if it was needed. The biggest thing was keeping the roads open for the electric utility crews.

They made only one medical emergency call, for a man south of Hinsdale who had no power and needed his oxygen supply.

"Monday we spent all day busting roads open, getting traffic through. Tuesday has been cleanup," Seiler said.

With nine pieces of equipment, county crews started with the school bus routes, then went to the main arteries and all other roads.

Seiler, who is also the county disaster and emergency services coordinator, said that Roosevelt County made a public announcement that law enforcement would pick up people who needed warm shelter. Valley County decided not to do that.

"We didn't want to endanger people going into the storm. We advised people to sit tight. They probably had everything there. We didn't want people to panic," Seiler said.

The Great Lakes flight came in to Glasgow Tuesday night but couldn't fly out for the next three days because of the fog. According to Steve Stanley of Prairie Aviation at the Glasgow airport, the crew sat here for four days with no swap possible. The airport was closed for two nights, Saturday and Sunday. The flight came in on Saturday afternoon, got out on Sunday morning with nine passengers and made its scheduled arrival at 8 p.m. Sunday night.

"They flew in some awful weather," Stanley said.

One private plane flew in and out Friday with a visiting specialist from Billings. Stanley said FAA minimums for air ambulance and charter airplanes require 1 mile visibility for takeoff and landing. Scheduled airlines can take off with one-quarter mile visibility, but must have 1 mile visibility to land.
Stanley said they have wonderful heavy equipment for snowplowing at the airport, including an Oshkosh with a 22-foot blade and a Freightliner with a 14-foot blade, plus an 8-foot rotary plow. The runways blew clear so they only had to clear the edges, but the taxiway was the worst, being at right angles to the wind. It was blowing so hard they couldn't keep up with the drifts there.

Opheim School, having no electricity, was closed Friday and Monday, and opened late on Tuesday because there was no power to plug the buses in. Glasgow ran no out-of-town buses on Monday. On Tuesday, the schedule was normal, except the St. Marie pickup was made in just one general area because the roads were still blocked. In Hinsdale they played the Friday game against Opheim but canceled the Saturday game with Lustre. On Monday, school was open but the route buses didn't run that morning, so parents drove their children in. By noon the county crews had cleared the bus routes, so the buses ran kids home in the afternoon. Nashua had a snow day on Monday. A lot of their students and staff live in the Wiota and Glentana area and wouldn't have been able to come in, plus some had lost power. Frazer School was closed on Monday because they didn't have enough people to plow.

"We had mountains of snow here," said Dean Blount. He said the east end of Frazer had no power and some people went to the Senior Citizen Center, but the outage didn't last very long, just overnight on Friday. He said they were fortunate that the temperature was 24 degrees – not bad.

Before the storm, Danielle Hallock brought her two children, Tia and Gage, from Opheim to stay in Glasgow with her parents, Dan and Rose Olson. Ten-year-old Tia said they packed a suitcase with clothes and some toys – Nintendos. Danielle's husband, Ty, plowed every day for the MDT. Their generator quit on Friday so her father sent his 1,000-watt generator to them. It was enough to run the fireplace, she said, and lots of people had no generator at all. Some went to their neighbors for shelter; some got a room in town; and some just toughed it out at home. People who had no heat retreated to one room and covered the windows with blankets.
It was a time for people to take care of each other. Farmers yanked stuck vehicles out of drifts with their big tractors. Up in the north country, people shared their generators, hauling them over to the neighbors for a few hours' warmup. A Glasgow business sent an employee to plow out driveways all along a street.

When concerned folks couldn't reach the Stonebergs by phone at their ranch on Timber Creek, 40 impassible miles south of Hinsdale, they asked law enforcement to help. Sheriff Glen Meier hired a plane and flew over the ranch. He was reassured when he saw that the cows were fed and Ron Stoneberg was standing at a gate with his dog. He waved briefly and seemed OK, Meier said.

The damage from this storm in Valley County may be between $150,000 and $200,000, Seiler said. Because the loss is less than $1 million, the county can't get disaster aid. However, cooperative utilities in the area can total their losses and try to get a presidential disaster declaration. This would reimburse them for costs like new poles, labor and fuel. Mark Gruener, the state's regional coordinator of disaster and emergency services, was in Opheim and Glasgow on Tuesday to assess the situation and expedite any possible disaster declaration.

"We're all working together to see what these utilities can do," Seiler said.