2 / OutdoorIllinois November 2009

One of the deadliest blizzards in modern history began as a duck

A Killer Day toStory By Joe McFarland

B y all accounts, the morn-ing of November 11, 1940began as just anotherunseasonably warm day inIllinois and the upper Mid-

west. Indian Summer—that autumn giftof mild weather that might last for just aday or two—had lingered far longerthan usual that year. By early November,Midwestern states as far north as Min-nesota still were experiencing a pro-longed warm spell that, even to thoseenjoying it, seemed far too good to betrue. People reported their gardens

were still productive until late in theseason. Day after day, sportsmen head-ing outdoors during the early morninghours were able to wear light jackets, orno jackets at all. Such weather would’vebeen normal for early September.Yet duck hunters weren’t impressed.

The mild weather had postponed thefall migration of waterfowl into the Mis-sissippi valley states, and flocks of ducksthat would’ve typically departed frozenmarshes of the north by mid autumnstill hadn’t arrived. Frustrated huntersup and down the Mississippi said theywould’ve gladly traded the mild weatherfor one, brisk November cold front.In a matter of hours, they were

about to get their wish.On the morning of November 11—

Armistice Day—crowds of sportsmentook advantage of the Monday holidayand a promising weather forecast to hitthe waters for what they anticipated tobe the first worthwhile day of duckhunting that season. Rain was expected,plus a cold front. Waterfowlers alwaysfavor such weather, so none offeredcomplaints about the warm air as theyloaded piles of decoys and shotgunsinto their wooden boats that morning.At LaCrosse, Wisconsin, hunters row-

ing in the darkness at 4:30 a.m. wouldhave been sweating from their labor inthe 52-degree weather. Many quickly

“Armistice Day Blizzard” by Michael Sieve. Artwork courtesy of the artist and Wild Wings, Lake City, MN 55041. For additional Michael Sieve images,

hunter’s dream.

Huntshed the heavy coats of the season—orleft them ashore. Despite the cold frontthat was predicted, hunters made atleast one, reckless error of judgmentthat morning: Even today as we headoutdoors, many of us willingly decide toabandon clothing we know we mightneed simply becausewe don’t need it atthat moment. Withthe brutal cold of aNovember stormabout to blast intothe upper Midwest,the decision topack light wouldprove deadly for

scores of hunters. In a matter of hours,no fewer than 87 duck hunters woulddie from exposure in Illinois, Wisconsinand Minnesota.Yet among those who survived the

fury of what’s known today as theArmistice Day Blizzard—one of theworst blizzards in modern history—hunters recall it as the greatest day ofduck hunting they ever saw.Ray Scott was just a boy of 12 in

1940, a young Minnesota hunter who’deagerly planned to spend the holidayhunting with his father and grandfa-ther, plus a couple of others, on LakeMcDonald in west-central Minnesota.Scott carried a single-shot 16 gauge—his mother’s gun—and was already apretty fair shot for any age. Now 81 andretired in northern Illinois, Scottrecalled rowing out to one of the float-ing bogs at the lake that morning, andhow the morning air was perfectlyagreeable for the season.

“It was fine, almost warm, when westarted off,” Scott remembered. “Butthe duck hunting wasn’t very gooduntil the weather began to change.”And change it did. By late morning, a

cold, wind-driven rain began to peltcentral Minnesota hunters as the frontroared east toward the Mississippi. Con-stant winds of 45 m.p.h. would rage forhours, with gusts reaching 80 m.p.h.recorded everywhere around the GreatLakes. In LaCrosse, where the tempera-ture was 52 degrees before dawn, it wassuddenly 14 degrees by mid afternoon.The front reached Chicago that after-

noon, toppling brick chimneys andmetal radio towers, uprooting trees andshattering store windows. People atoutdoor memorials for Armistice Dayrecall ceremonies suddenly turned vio-lent with flying debris—street signs andshattered window glass—airborne asstorm shrapnel. As the ferocious “windsof hell” screamed across northern Illi-nois, the long, pleasant Indian Summerresidents had enjoyed for so long literal-ly vanished in a matter of seconds. Thetemperature in Chicago was 62 degreesat 10 a.m.; by midnight it was 19.As Scott and his hunting group

braced against the gale in their Minneso-ta blind, the straight-line rain changed tohail, then sleet, then a full-blown bliz-zard. The best part: Thousands of duckspoured from the dark skies as the icywinds pummeled the lakes and marshesof the upper Midwest.For the crowds of hunters who’d

been frustrated by poor shootingopportunities, their dreams seemed tobe coming true and the thunder ofshotguns soon rivaled the roar of the

contact 800-445-4833 or visit wildwings.com.

Illinois hunter Ray Scott, 81, was duck

hunting with his father and grandfather in

Minnesota on November 11, 1940. They

survived a deadly blizzard—thanks to

young Ray’s wet boots.

Northern Illinois was blasted by

gale-force winds during the storm which

sank or ran aground at least six cargo

ships on Lake Michigan.

(Photo by Joe McFarland.)

(Rockford Register Star/Copyrighted/Used With Permission.)

wind. As fast as he could work hisnumb fingers, Scott would eject oneshell and cram in another. Every bird inthe flyway seemed to be rushing in toload up on food before it would becovered in snow.“I’ve never seen anything like it

before or since,” the hunter recalled.Yet duck hunters everywhere wereignoring the critical clue from nature.Instead of reading the strange behavioras nature’s warning to pack up andleave, shivering hunters jammed moreshells into their shotguns and kept fir-ing. Hunters from Minnesota to Illinoisthat day reported ducks diving out ofthe wind and into their decoys as fast asany hunter could take aim.“They didn’t seem to care that we

were shooting,” Scott said. “We’d shootsome ducks, then, right away, herewould come another round of ducks.”Unknown to everyone was the dead-

ly potential of the massive front thathad just barreled into the region. Evenweather officials underestimated thisnow-legendary monster of a storm, butfor good reason. By today’s standards,

weather predictions in 1940 were edu-cated guesswork, with broad, generalforecasts issued for entire regions basedon weather observations wired in fromother states. In 1940, the U.S. WeatherBureau office (now the National Weath-er Service) in Chicago issued just fourdaily reports covering eight Midwesternstates. The office wasn’t even staffedduring the night, so the only officialhint of potentially severe weather any-body could’ve had that morning was a“strong cold front” advisory the bureauhad issued for Minnesota.Although modern weather radar and

satellite technology didn’t exist, thestorm already had a fierce, known his-tory. A few days earlier, a newly builtbut poorly engineered suspensionbridge at Tacoma, Washington buckledand collapsed amid steady, 45-m.p.hwinds as the low-pressure blast firstmoved inland. When the powerful frontmoved across the Rockies on Nov. 9,then plunged into Oklahoma before lift-ing into the upper Midwest, meteorolo-gists still didn’t quite comprehend the

deadly potential of the two fronts aboutto smash together.Today the storm is cited as a text-

book example.“November storms like that are noto-

rious for giving you some really goodweather followed by sudden pressurechanges that can create massive storms,”explained Illinois State Water Survey cli-matologist Jim Angel, who said thefamous wreck of the Edmund Fitzgeraldon Lake Superior on virtually the sameday 35 years later (November 10, 1975)was caused by precisely such a gale.“It’s the time of year when you get

these strong contrasts between warm,moist air from the south and cold airfrom Canada,” he said. “The winds canbe incredibly strong, and when thecold front passes through, the tempera-ture drops like a rock.”Witnesses to the Armistice Day

storm were stunned. At LaCrosse, thetemperature fell to 14 degrees by midafternoon. Ceaseless, raging winds gust-ing up to 80 m.p.h. stranded hunters onislands along the Mississippi as theywere unable to boat to safety. Sometried to battle the 5-foot waves butdrowned as their boats capsized. Oth-ers remained huddled together in wetjackets, yet many still froze to deathwithin hours.The official death toll from the

Armistice Day Blizzard has never beenestablished. But at least 159 peoplewere known to have died as a result ofthe storm, and more than half of themwere duck hunters.“It’s known as the granddaddy of all

blizzards in Minnesota,” said PeteBoulay, assistant state climatologist forthe Minnesota Department of Natural

Following the Armistic Day Blizzard, trans-

portation in Minnesota and Wisconsin

ceased as rescuers shoveled out victims

covered by more than 2 feet of snow.

Northwestern Illinois hunters on the Mis-

sissippi were stranded by the Nov. 11, 1940

blizzard. Not all survived to tell their story.

4 / OutdoorIllinois November 2009

(Photocredit:MinneapolisStarJournal)

(Alfred W. Mueller Historical Collection.)

Resources. “It’s still ranked as the sec-ond-worst storm of any kind to ever tohit the state.”Young Ray Scott survived to tell his

story 69 years later thanks to one, fortu-itous slip of his boot that day.“I’d stepped out onto the bog to

retrieve a couple of ducks and my footfell through and got wet,” Scott remem-bered. As the 12-year-old sat shivering inthe blind, with inches of snow accumu-lating on his gun, Scott’s father finallyturned to the other men in the huntingparty and announced a fatherly decision.“Let’s take Ray home,” his father

announced. “I don’t want him to getsick.”“That decision probably saved all of

our lives,” Scott said. “If we’d havestayed any longer, we never would

have been ableto get acrossthe lake. Itwould havebeen frozensolid.”With morethan 60 ducks

aboard, the hunting party struggled toinch forward with their rowboats in theraging blizzard. One of the men with anoar smashed ice that had formed sincemorning. Elsewhere, hunters who sim-ply couldn’t stop shooting—or had noway to escape the blizzard—eventuallyfound themselves making primitive bliz-zard shelters with overturned boats.Some chose to break up the woodenboats for firewood in the bitter cold asthe temperature plummeted.“When the boats were burned and

gone,” Scott said, “they froze to death.”

Hunters can make peculiar decisionswhen they’re experiencing the greatesthunt of their life. Ed Sorenson was anIllinois hunter who’d just turned 26 in1940. On that mild, breezy morning ofNovember 11, when temperatureswere still 62 degrees in Chicago at 10a.m., Sorenson was hunting pheasantsnear what is now Chain O’Lakes StatePark in Antioch. As the front suddenlyroared into northeastern Illinois, Soren-son quickly figured out where the realaction was at.“The ducks were flying like you

never saw before,” Sorenson, now 95,recalled. “But it was so windy youcouldn’t get out on the water. The shorewas the only place you could hunt.”Smart choice. Even without the

heavy snows that were smotheringhunters elsewhere, the brutally coldwind made boating nearly impossibleacross much of Illinois that day. OnLake Michigan, five ships ripped apartby mountainous waves either sank orran aground, killing 66 crew members.“A number of hunters were stranded

on Grass Lake,” Sorenson added. “Buteven if they knew the storm was com-ing, they still would have gone out.”The hunting was that good.

Following the storm, rescuers uncovered grim

evidence of the tragedy. Minnesota duck

hunters unprepared for the sudden weather

change froze to death in wet clothing.

Ray Scott Sr. was an avid waterfowler who

lived in an era when high-tech, waterproof

hunting clothing didn’t exist.

November 2009 OutdoorIllinois / 5

(Photocredit:MinneapolisStarJournal)

(PhotoCredit:Ray

Scott)