The Advance

THE ADVANCE.

WEATHER IN THE NORTHWEST.

We thought we had some pretty severe weather a few days ago, when the thermometer registered down near zero, but it wasn't a circumstance in comparison with the weather they have had in the Dakotas. A letter from an officer of the South Dakota Reform School at Plankinton, under date of February 1, says:

"Your welcome favor, of January 12 came to hand about January 20, having been delayed on account of the immense snow blockades along the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway system. It may sound like pretty hard blowing (and we usually get a gale of about fifty or seventy miles an hour), but we have snow piles around the School ten or twelve feet high, and solid enough for a four-horse team with a heavy loaded wagon to go over the top of them. One pile especially in the rear of the main building is worthy of a few words. The pile will average about five feet high and is about four hundred feet long, and easily twenty-five feet wide. Over this immense amount of frozen water I take twenty printing-office boys five or six times a day.

We have had nothing but storms since Christmas, and especially on Sundays. Every Sunday this year, but yesterday, January 31, has been an exceptional stormy day, and we have been living like heathens, so to speak. Our Sunday services were cut short on these days. We have been without mails from three to six days, practically being cut off from the outside world. There is more snow in the Dakotas this year than there has been for ten or fifteen years back, so the old settlers say. I have been thinking seriously of getting a boat the coming Spring, for there will simply be a flood. In Col. Ainsworth's old home in St. Lawrence County, Northern New-York, we learn that the temperature has been thirty-six degrees below zero. In some parts of this State, and in North Dakota and Minnesota, the mercury in the thermometer registered forty and forty-two degrees below zero, and people were almost tempted to put a gas-pipe below the thermometer and let the mercury run down until it got tired!"

The South Dakota Mail, of January 30, says:

Clear, still and cold Tuesday morning, with the mercury standing at twenty-two below zero. If this is kept up very much longer we will be compelled to fasten a long poker on to the lower end of our thermometer so the mercury can run down to a point of destination. Certainly there must be a hereafter and with the coming of that specified time there must be warmer weather. The storm of last Saturday was quite severe and disagreeable. The mercury run down to twenty degrees below zero last Saturday night. The country roads as well as the railroads were closed for a time. The first mail and passenger train from the east, since last Friday night, came in yesterday morning about one o'clock and went west. Now we have reading matter sufficient for another blockade-of a week's duration.

There is quite a demand for hay and straw just now. There will be a real shortage of all kinds of fodder before the winter is over and gone unless threshing can be resumed and the corn is husked."

And the following is the style of "locals" they publish in North Dakota now a-days.

The Globe, of Wahpeton, says:

Dr. Sowles has a path ten or twelve feet deep-leading from his house.
The snow in the groves around Messrs. Blanding's and Taylor's places has filled in to a depth of twenty feet.
The Pelham House was solidly walled in along its front up to the second floor.
W. I. Craft's residence was snowed in to the roof. He had to dig his way out and then shovel the snow away and out of the house.
The courthouse yard drifts are dug out, forming snow walls high over head between which the legal lights pass and repass to court sessions,
S. E. DeLong regards the present drift over his residence as greater than his famous drift of 1892. It extends to the peak of the house and extends sloping away for fully half a block.
Chas G. Bade found double work to do. Snow had settled tightly against the outside doors completely covering them. He first shoveled a way out, thereby filling his shed, and then crawling out, shoveled out the shed.
A snow hill runs from John Nelson's house diagonally across Sixth-street to Goettleman's livery. It fits snug against the east and south sides of Mr. Nelson's house making the family's only means of exit lie in the west doors.