Blizzard Coming: December 2025

It’s going to be one of those weekends.

From the local forecast page Saturday evening:

Dense Fog Advisory until December 28, 06:00 AM CST
Blizzard Warning in effect from December 28, 09:00 AM CST until December 29, 06:00 AM CST
(Current conditions and forecast for Sauk Centre Municipal Airport (KD39))

Normally, I can see Our Lady of the Angels’ bell tower from the north window.

A little after noon on Saturday, it was visible: but only as a gray shape in the grayness cloaking my part of the world. It’s two blocks away — something like six or seven hundred feet. Call it 200 meters, give or take a bit.

Later that afternoon, All that showed above the leafless trees was grayness. The trees themselves weren’t so much trees as general outlines of trees, rendered in pale monochrome watercolor.

It’s been a very foggy day.

There’s a slight chance of freezing rain before the snow starts, and the odds are that the fog will freeze on roads and sidewalks in at least a few places.

The good news is that these days we have pretty good weather data and forecasting.

It hasn’t always been that way.

My mother talked about a particularly bad storm in the Red River Valley. It wasn’t just severe: it had started on a mild, beautiful day with Courier-and-Ives flakes of snow drifting down. Folks hitched up their sleighs/sleds/whatever and went out to enjoy a winter ride.

Then the wind picked up, the temperature went down, and snow started coming in wholesale lots. Some folks didn’t make it home.

I can’t say which storm that was. It might be this one:

• “Blizzard of 1896”
  Grand Forks Photographic Collection, University of North Dakota Scholarly Commons

But much more probably was another one, a bit more recently.

I’m not going to try sorting that out now.

Meanwhile, I see that some of the New England states are experiencing a winter weather advisory. I hope folks there either have the equipment needed, or know someone who does; and have an insulated, heated place to stay.