Behind the Scenes

How cold was it???

Ken Anderson, a member of the Brownfield Ag News Team, is Farm Director for Waitt Agribusiness Network and headquartered in the winter wonderland of Lincoln, Nebraska.

When we talk about bad winters, I always bring up the winter of ’68-’69. As a youngster growing up in South Dakota, I remember snow drifts 15 feet deep in our farm yard and temperatures of 40 to 50 below zero (okay, those numbers may have increased slightly over the years—but it was nasty).

So will the winter of ’09-’10 in Nebraska and Iowa be one of those we’re still talking about 40 years from now? It has the potential to be legendary. The National Weather Service confirms that, so far this season, Lincoln, Nebraska (where I now live) has had 32.4 inches of snow, or 21.4 inches above normal. It’s the most snow in a season since 1948. Temperature-wise, the overnight lows in Lincoln during the first 10 days of the year averaged 2.3 degrees. That’s the fourth coldest start to a year since record keeping started in 1887. The coldest ever was -5.3 in 1974.

So, yes, chances are good that we’ll be sitting in our rockers in 2050 saying, “I still remember the winter of ’09-’10…”

-Ken Anderson