The Harvard Courier Saturday Apr 18 1908 pg 4

Anniversary of Blizzard

  Wednesday, April 15, was the thirty-fifth anniversary of the big blizzard and sleet storm that struck the west with varied degrees of intensity, and its center over southern Nebraska, and northern central Kansas.

  The first twelve days of April 1873 were as mild and balmy as was ever known to any spring time.   On the morning of the 13th a snow and sleet storm started which has never been equaled in intensity and disastrous results in the west.  It prevailed for three days.  In Nebraska the gale blew for two days at a rate of sixty to eighty miles an hour and the snow-fall was tremendous.  Railroad traffic was suspended throughout the entire west.  Fortunately it was not extremely cold, but the wind and snow were terrific.  Cattle and sheep perished by the thousands.  In the early day no preparation had been nor could be made for the protection of live stock.  Many lives were lost during the storm through Nebraska.

  A pecularity of the storm was that it spent its entire fury in the three days.  April 13, 14 and 15 and the following days and entire spring were exceptionally beautiful and fine.  The storm had done its work in the destruction of live stock and the farmers and homesteaders had left scarcely enough horses and cattle to do their farm work that had been interrupted by the storm.  Little or no wheat was grown in the country at that time, and as the storm had passed before corn planting time, the crop did not materially suffer.  The following year, came the great grasshopper plague and the pioneers had hardly recovered from the April storm of 1873, when they had to encounter the grasshopper disaster, which had no equal in the farming history of the west.