Outside Looking In

Surviving a blizzard
Before the latest blizzard hit and shut down some events for a day or two, the winter had been unseasonably warm with little snow and little wind.
That all changed on Thursday when the area was hit with four inches of snow, along with freezing rain and fierce winds. But this recent blizzard pales in comparison to some of the harshest winter storms of years gone by.
On the day that Minneota was incorporated as a village in October of 1880, winter came early. Local historians of that period told the Mascot that they had never seen a comparable winter to this one as far as duration, continued severity, depth of snow, and damage to property."
That 1880 blizzard has been called the worst snowstorm in Minnesota history by the National Weather Service and is the benchmark for other snowstorms.
That October storm surprised most of the farmers who were not prepared as threshing was only half completed, barns were not readied for winter, and cattle were scattered.
Sam Kile, 18, was helping with the threshing at the Tom Brown farm north of Minneota when a blizzard began on Oct. 16, 1880. Sam's hat blew off in the high winds and he ran after it despite protests of the others helping at the farm. That was the last time anyone saw Sam alive. The other farmhands shouted and rang bells in hopes of guiding the teenager back to the barn, but he never returned.
Over the next three weeks, efforts were made to locate the body, including the dragging of the nearby Yellow Medicine River. Eventually, the body was discovered inside a snowbank, approximately 300 yards from the barn. His hat was also eventually found a mile and a half away.
Hearing about Kile's death in that storm, reminded me of a story I wrote for another publication five years ago about another 18-year-old.
In 1975, a deadly blizzard struck this part of the state and an 18-year-old from Montevideo managed to escape Mother Nature's chilling wrath by spending the night in a makeshift snow fort.
This storm hit on Jan. 10-12 in 1975. It had been called "The Storm of the Century" by many news outlets as 14 people perished in the state during the storm, while another 21 died of heart attacks while digging out after the storm. There were also over 15,000 farm animals killed over the three-day period. Snowfall was reportedly 30 inches in some parts of the state. With winds gusting to 80-90 miles per hour, drifts reached 20-foot heights in some locations.
As the blizzard was in its infant stages, Kvanli received permission to take his family's Arctic Cat Puma snowmobile into town - just a 1 1/2-mile trip from their farm - so he could spend some time with friends.
He took off for town around 5 p.m. just as it was beginning to get dark. The storm intensified very quickly and worsened during Kvanli's trip. Before the storm struck, the temperature was 40 degrees, but the mercury quickly plummeted to -35 below later in the day. The wind chill was reportedly -75 below.
"It got to the point where I could barely see my hand in front of my face," Kvanli told me. With visibility limited, Kvanli became lost and decided to follow his tracks back home. But the tracks had already been eliminated by the blowing and drifting snow like a giant eraser on a chalkboard.
Kvanli's snowmobile soon became stuck in the snow and the engine stalled. Not knowing what to do or which direction to head, Kvanli admitted that he "really thought I was going to die."
Figuring his only chance of survival was to get out of the wind. He found a large drift against some cornstalks that were still standing in a field, dug out a small area and climbed inside.
"I remembered from Science class that snow doesn't get colder than 32 degrees and it was -75 outside, so I was already in a much better situation," he said.
Not wanting to fall asleep for fear he would not wake up, Kvanli prayed, sang and talked to himself. He tried to keep warm by doing push-ups until he got tired.
At the first sign of light in the morning, Kvanli decided to walk despite having little to no feeling in his fingers or from his knees down. Because it was still windy, Kvanli walked with his back to the wind, kept his arms close to his chest to keep them out of the wind, and made fists inside his gloves to keep his digits as warm as possible.
He tripped over something and realized it was a farm neighbor's maibox, about a half-mile from the Kvanli farm. Kvanli walked up to the house and went inside without knocking because he was so desperate to get warm.
Kvanli's parents had tried to search for their son that night when he did not show up at his friend's house. With Kvanli's mother driving a 3/4-ton pickup, his father walked outside while holding onto the side mirror of the vehicle. Travel soon became nearly impossible and they were forced to return home.
With Lon entered the neighbor's home and told them what had happened, they phoned his parents to let them know his whereabouts.
Pliers had to be used to unzip the zipper on Kvanli's snowmobile suit because it was so frozen. The sweat from his feet had caused his socks to freeze to his feet and to his boots. When he was placed in a tub of lukewarm water at the neighbor's home, "it felt like a thousand needles going through my body."
Surprisingly, Kvanli suffered no frostbite. The snowmobile he was driving was eventually found near the airport, well northwest of his intended destination. Friends later referred to him as "Lucky" or "Snowman".
Kvanli returned to school, placed second in the state in his weight class in wrestling; his lone loss of the season came in the state championship of what was then a one-class tournament.
Kvanli later enrolled at Luther Seminary College in St. Paul and eventually became a pastor. He and his wife, Heidi are co-pastors of the First Lutheran Church in Mitchell, SD.
"A lot of people thought I made a promise to God that day," Kvanli said. "But that wasn't the case. But I do believe God had a plan for me, and it wasn't time for me to die."