The Long Winter

It was only the first in a long series of blizzards that swept across the northern Great Plains during the winter of 1880 to 1881.

This winter became legendary for the amount and persistence of its snowfall and was immortalized in Laura Ingalls Wilder book, The Long Winter.

I wondered, okay, was that a strong El Nino year?

I know 1877 was.

But before that, I just wanted to give you some bonus content in the form of my favorite songs that we've encountered in the Little House series.

And these are all from By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, and Little Town on the Prairie.

And usually I play just about 30 seconds of a song so you get the flavor of it or so that you can see.

the lyrics that Lori uses, but here I'm going to play the whole song.

But that song is just so sad and so beautiful.

And I wanted to dedicate that to my mommy who she does not listen to the podcast, but she supports me in this effort.

The next song is going to be from The Long Winter When Pa Goes to Volga.

This is Roll the Old Chariot by David Coffin.

Blocked by the Rockies to the west, cold air from Canada and warm air from the Gulf collide across America's heartland, leading to sudden storms, tornadoes, and extreme temperature changes.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of The Little House on the Prairie, wrote about this season in a book called The Long Winter.

Recent adaptations of her work depict the drudgery of braiding hay, how families would grind wheat and coffee mills to survive, or nervously scan the horizon for a sooty cloud that could signal a coming storm.

But this storm was different.