Thanksgiving Snow of 1950 Recounted
Seventy-five years ago this week, life in the local area came to a halt due to the Great Thanksgiving Weekend Snow of 1950. Older citizens remember the snow well while others can relate stories passed down over the years from parents, grandparents and family members who have since passed on.
An account of the storm in the local history book, Somerton Area Heritage, reports, “when the snow stopped, a total of 32 inches of white stuff covered everything. Schools were out a week, some rural residents stranded even longer.”
The holiday period began with an official weather forecast for Wednesday, Nov. 22 as “some cloudiness today with a high of forty over the north, 40-45 over the south and some light rain or snow tonight.”
The snow hinted at by forecasters began at 3 a.m. Thanksgiving Day as the mercury plummeted to the zero mark. By Friday, most people were obliged to stay where they were as transportation ground to a halt.
During the snowfall newspapers reported the area was “paralyzed after 32 hours of snow” with over 20 inches on the ground and more on the way. State routes 8, 147 and 145 were closed with no questions raised as to the conditions of less traveled roadways.
During the storm, over 65 people were rescued from 25 vehicles on Route 40 near the Fairview community, the storm catching many holiday travelers enroute.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol dispatched word to the village where Rev. Charles Tulga, Methodist minister, formed a party and the rescuers trekked “through the snow shoulder high and a blizzard with biting wind to reach the marooned,” Ray Palmer of the Barnesville Enterprise reported.
For his part, Palmer like most of the Buckeye faithful, missed the Ohio State-Michigan “Snow Bowl” football matchup at the “shoe”. He taped tickets on the front window of the newspaper office offering them to any takers. There were none!
Homes were opened to alumni, parents and friends who came early to Barnesville for the Friends Boarding School Homecoming slated to take place on Saturday.
When the snowfall slowed on Monday, the frozen precipitation had fallen 52 straight hours.
Employees of the M-K Grocery Company warehouse spent most of their time that first week removing snow from the building’s flat roof along the B & O Railroad tracks.
A bulldozer that opened Route 8 to U.S.40 at Hendrysburg Junction, was followed by a caravan of about 50 vehicles.
Coal company bulldozers reached Somerton the same day, but rural roads were another story as few villages and townships had equipment to move that much snow at that time.
In 2000, historian and author Roger Pickenpaugh, a teacher in the Noble Local School District, authored Blizzard of the Century, a book covering personal stories from eight southeastern Ohio counties including Belmont. The book is still available online at Amazon.
See more photos of Barnesville during the Thanksgiving 1950 Snowstorm in the accompanying article, Thanksgiving Snowstorm Recorded in Barnesville Photographs.
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