Living in Saskatchewan, I have seen lots of weird winter weather over the years. This winter has actually been very good for us... so far. We have had some cold weather but very little wind with it, so it has been liveable for both people and critters. At this point, we have very little snow, and hopefully we will get some in the next two months. We need snow to get our creeks and dugouts filled. We went into winter very very dry. My dad always says of we have to go through a drought, January isn't a bad time to have it.
As for the worst winters I have seen, several come to mind. I am not the best for remembering the years but I do remember a few. The 3 worst storms I have ever seen actually happened in the US.
1974 - a fairly normal winter until March. I drove to the dispersal sale of Graham Land and Livestock at Waverly, Minnesota. When I left home we had no snow, and the cows were calving in the pasture. It was nice weather at the sale, but it started snowing the day following the sale. By the time I got to Minot, ND the police were stopping traffic. I stayed in Minot for 3 days as the highways had 8 to 10 ft snow drifts over them in places. I remember coming home to the worst mess I have ever seen here. We had to get a payloader in to find our haystacks. Cattle were walking over top of 10 foot porosity fences. Cattle were trapped inside one cattle shed as snow had completely enclosed the front of it. Fortunately, it turned warm following the storm and we went right to a mess of mud.
1978 - winter arrived early. Heavy snow in late October that stayed. We were building our feedlot that fall and we had snow banks over all the fences. Luckily we did not have any cattle in the lot yet. Our cows were still on pasture when the storm hit. Some went into the creek for shelter and were buried. We lost several good cows in that storm. It turned cold and stayed cold almost all winter with numerous bad blizzards. That winter was the closest I have come to thinking about selling the cows.
Two other bad storms cme to mind... both in the mid to late 80s. One happened in March. I had drove to the American Polled Shorthorn Congress sale in Omaha and it was raining when I arrived. When I looked out of my hotel room the next morning, all I could see was small humps in the parking lot, where the vehicles were parked. After a few hours we were able to get down to the AK-Sar-Ben grounds for the show and sale. After the sale, we made it back to the hotel, but only because we had a 4x4 truck. We stayed at the hotel for 3 days as the roads were all blocked. The morning of the 4th day, it turned warm and sunny but the forecast was for another storm. We decided to try to get out of Dodge but the Interstate was still closed. We managed to get around the barracades, but it took us over 6 hours to drive the 100 miles to Sioux City, and we must have seen several hundred abandoned vehicles on the highway. At Sioux City we hit completely dry roads and it was smooth sailing all the way home.
The second storm occurred again on my way to Omaha on October 31st. This time I was flying to the Hoyt Central sale at Blair,NB. The plane landed at Minneapolis in a raging blizzard. It stormed so back that no one could even leave the terminal to go to a hotel. I sat in the terminal for 47 hours and finally got to Omaha, where the storm had just hit. It was just about as bad there. I made it out to the sale, where only 8 people showed up other than the owners.
We would wake up every two hours and plow our drive way and the road to the feedyard. other wise our big 4 wheel drive pusher tractor would get stuck because there was so much snow. The kids that lived out in the country were out of school for two weeks, it would take all day to feed cattle where as noramlly it only took an hour. and then the other part of my time was spent unfreezing our gas :'(
