Publisher’s Perspective

By Tim Douglass, Publisher of the Pope County Tribune

Now that it’s over, we can say last week’s storm wasn’t the storm of the century.

Sure, it did command the kind of respect for nature that we often ignore.  Just the storm’s predictions caused many of us to stock up on groceries for a prolonged stay home.  And most of us, at least, stayed off the roads for about 24 hours.

In Pope County, we were on the northern edge of the storm that dumped about a foot of snow or more on much of the state.

In southwestern and western Minnesota, the snowfall was well over that 12-inch mark.  And the winds on Wednesday night were howling.

But, by Thursday afternoon, most of us were dug out and able to move around our communities.

This storm was predicted to be a double-whammy snow event with 5-6 inches of snow predicted on Tuesday night and then another wave of substantial snowfall on Wednesday through Thursday. The snow totals were close, but the storm was without significant wind until Wednesday night.

While there was some wind that night, it wasn’t the kind of sustained wind that makes for a blizzard.  In fact, most of us wouldn’t have called this latest winter storm a “blizzard.”

It was, however, a major storm and because many listened to the nagging predictions, most of us remained safe throughout.

As for those comparing it to the Halloween blizzard of 1991, they shouldn’t even try.  I was stuck in a duck-hunting shack for four days during that storm huddled around a wood-burning stove.  Luckily, my older brother decided to throw some firewood into his truck before he left home because finding any burnable wood around the shack was impossible with the amount of snow that fell in the first two days of that storm.   

Because it was October, we didn’t have shovels at the duck shack to dig out.  Instead, once the snow and wind subsided, we used canoe paddles to shovel a path from the shack to the nearest plowed road.  I can remember the endless snowfall and the howling winds.  The one highlight, as is typical, the ducks were plentiful just ahead of that storm.