The Big Snow… Of ’69: Last Week Was Fun, But Doesn’t Compare to 1969

The Big Snow… Of ’69: Last Week Was Fun, But Doesn’t Compare to 1969

Originally posted on CampusAttic.com on December 11th, 2013

BJ Kelley and Tyler Johnstone participate in a massive snowball fight on campus. (courtesy: KEZI)

    Last Friday became a winter wonderland for University of Oregon students, and a nightmare for drivers and travelers throughout the Pacific Northwest. The university officially shut down in the wake of the seven inches of snow that fell on Eugene, the first complete closure due to weather for the UO in decades.

    The snow has stopped, but the cold remains, temperatures at night dropping below zero repeatedly, but not yet quite as cold as the record in Eugene of -12 back in 1972. The rare mass of snow and cancellation of classes made for a blissful combination for students, a massive snowball fight organized on the rec fields behind Hayward Field being well-documented, along with other not quite as positively publicized uses of attack via snow on a professor that led to one football player being suspended for the Alamo Bowl.

(courtesy: The Daily Emerald)

    It wasn’t all fun though, as multiple events had to be canceled in the past week. An Oregon State basketball game was canceled, and quite ironically Oregon’s club hockey team’s planned trip to Washington State was also postponed…ice hockey canceled due to snow. The delays have also led to a bit of chaos in the final days of classes and finals.

    As the joys of the storm’s bounty now slowly turn to ice and slush with cold temperatures remaining for the foreseeable future, the happiness the storm once brought slowly gives way to resentment over the bitter cold and treacherous streets and walkways. With freezing rain to come, Eugene will come to resemble an ice skating rink on the paths and roads, the unadulterated happiness of frollicks and fights in the snow becoming a distant memory.

    But the 2013 snowstorm is mild in comparison to the biggest storm ever witnessed at the University of Oregon. During a week-long stretch in January 1969, three feet of snow buried campus, and the state…that’s five times as much as what fell last week, for non-mathematics majors.

    It wasn’t the first time the university had closed. In 1884, a harsh winter storm had been so cold that the Millrace froze over, leading to a new craze among students rarely experienced in Eugene — ice skating. In 1942 downed power lines due to harsh weather closed campus for a day and a half, but never had there been adverse weather or a closure like this before, or since.

    The snow began to fall on January 25th, 1969, and didn’t stop until six days later. Snowfall in excess of two-to-three feet accumulated, and matched with steady freezing temperatures, nothing melted away. For the entire month of January that year, a total of 47 inches fell on the valley floor, seven times the normal monthly snowfall.

    The entire state was buried in the white stuff, even along the coast where snow beyond two inches was extremely rare, areas such as Coos Bay experienced in excess of two feet.  In Eugene, the city came to a complete standstill, the public works lacking a single snow plow, failing to invest in equipment that seemed so unlikely to ever be needed in the community. Road graders were attempted to clear paths, which caused more trouble than they were worth, and crews trying to sand the roads proved completely futile, at least in the early days of the storm.

The Eugene Register Guard’s headline said it all

    “This kind of thing happens so seldom we can’t afford to purchase that kind of equipment,” Eugene city manager Hugh McKinley was quoted by the Eugene Register-Guard in their January 27th edition, regarding the lack of a single snow plow being available for the city.

    It wasn’t expected to be quite so much. Weather reports early that week indicated to expect a couple inches, but certainly nothing predicted blizzard levels. After the initial light dusting the city of Eugene Parks and Recreation department even set up lights along Laurelwood golf course to allow for night sledding and wood for bonfires to warm children’s hands between slides down the hill.

    Kids certainly weren’t complaining, already having been treated to a four-day weekend thanks to earlier snow accumulation and cold and ice in the week preceding the arrival of the main storm. Plenty of opportunities for sledding would continue for some time, as 10 streets around Eugene were also blocked off by police for the safety of sledders, and motorists for that matter, as driving even with chains proved folly.

   

Flights out of Mahlon Sweet Airport were canceled by the first day of the storm, but all other public transportation proceeded on normal schedules, having no idea of what was to come. With the streets soon to become unmanageable, even the buses would be brought to a halt eventually. Flights in and out of Eugene would be canceled for over a week.

    Two decades prior, Eugene had set a record of 36 inches of snowfall for the month of January, in 1950. When the storm began on January 25th, 1969, only 6.6 inches had been recorded for the entire month, a mild nuisance for public works crews to keep roads open but certainly nothing considered record-breaking. Everyone was completely unprepared for the storm that just wouldn’t stop.

    By the 26th, the gross misjudgment by weather reports was abundantly clear. On Saturday, January 25th alone, 15 inches of snow had fallen on Eugene, more than doubling the record for most single-day snowfall. By midnight the state police had issued an official plea for all traffic to stay off the roads-regardless of chains-until conditions improved. As the winds picked up, they created snow drifts of 3-4 feet in some places. 10 more inches of snow would fall on Monday.

    Thankfully, damages were actually light considering the vast accumulation, thanks to it being a dry, fluffy snowfall rather than moisture-laden. Only a few power lines and trees were downed from the weight, so with the city on lockdown, most citizens had power to keep warm.

Students trek across campus. (courtesy: 1969 Oregana yearbook – UO Knight LIbrary and Special Collections)

    There were five major roof collapses reported, but farmers took the worst of it, while loss of human life wasn’t reported directly due to the storm, farm animal populations were devastated by the cold. By Thursday, helicopters were being used to airlift hay to farms throughout the valley, their normal pasture lands buried under three feet of snow leaving animals without food for days.

    The tentative optimism from the weather services Tuesday, January 27th, that the worst was over and normal activities could resume, soon were quickly quelled, as another storm front moved in Wednesday just as the first dissipated. As temperatures dropped near zero, a new front moved down from the Gulf of Alaska late Wednesday, dumping all new snow just as residents had begun digging themselves out.

    At the University of Oregon, classes were canceled on Monday and Tuesday, while Lane Community College also canceled class Tuesday. The extended weekend gave the opportunity for many recreational snow-related opportunities on campus, as with the roads covered there was little escape to get off-campus. Massive snowball fights happened all over campus, leading to some windows being broken, while others attempted building igloos or snowmen, and other typical snow-related college student hi-jinx ensued.

    Classes resumed on Wednesday, January 28th, but only for a short time, when word of a new storm front moving in led to the ‘here we go again’ inevitable re-closure of schools, as reports from the gulf showed two new weather systems moving in that would hit Eugene Thursday morning and then Friday evening…the constant snowfall would persist for a week straight thanks to the line of fronts impacting one after another in perfect succession.

    As yet more snow fell, the weight of it all began to take its toll. Willamette Valley Manufacturing Co. and Northwest Marble Co. both had their roofs cave in along with five other businesses, resulting in thousands of dollars of damage and lost equipment, leading to county and city building inspectors recommending that all flat roofs should be cleared of snow as soon as possible to brace for the incoming additional snowfall.

    While most roads by Wednesday were clear for at least one lane of traffic, no cars without chains were allowed on the roads, and nearly all commerce had been brought to a standstill, leaving many outlying areas dangerously low on fuel and food supplies.

     For young entrepreneurs though business was booming, when the sledding hills were too crowded kids took to offering their services clearing roofs of snow…for a price. In Junction City, high-schoolers had organized an official roof-clearing service, charging up to $15 per day, over 75 joining in to the temporary business and the vast profits to be had.

    The state of emergency that had been declared was reduced to a “limited emergency” by Thursday, the continued snowfall being far more manageable than the overwhelming amount that had fallen earlier in the week. An emergency service center had been set up in the State Capitol building by Wednesday, but the worst of it being over, few requests came in.

    Classes resumed on Thursday at the UO, though no night courses were held, and students began the drudgery of traversing to class along hazardous icy paths and vast snowbanks — the vacation was over. With the roads still precarious and only some businesses open, deliveries to the university had been slowed, resulting in a rationing of food in the dormitories. Meals with meat were scheduled to be alternated with non-meat meals, and milk supplies ran low. At the university power plant, there was enough fuel to last through Saturday, but the warning of possibly more weather to come gave concern that the plant might not be able to function at full capacity.

    Parking meanwhile was even more miserable than usual. A common complaint at the university regardless, only two lots had been cleared of snow drifts when classes resumed, reserved exclusively for faculty, and only cars with chains were capable of reaching them anyway. Students living off-campus were completely on their own, and based on head-counts chose to skip, along with some professors.

    But while class cancellation for much of the week and the epic snowball fights had led to good times for students, the best news of all came on Thursday by way of a sign posted on a bulletin board in the student union, “No Tests – by request of President Charles Johnson”, alongside another offering free coffee to all students willing to stand in line at the EMU.

The EMU, buried in snow during the 1969 big snow. (courtesy: 1969 Oregana yearbook – UO Knight LIbrary and Special Collections)

    Only about half the students were back on campus, those living off-site still unable to travel, others choosing to simply stay indoors. Campus felt largely deserted, except for the small breaks between classes, when inevitably snowballs would fly, at both fellow students and passing cars. One big jolt came to students inside Fenton Hall, when several hundred pounds of snow suddenly fell off the roof during classes, burying the porch commonly used for smoking breaks and people watching.

    As the mercury finally started to rise heading into the weekend, the snow flurries eventually changed to rain, and the masses of snow slowly began to melt. The storm had cost the city of Eugene an estimated $25,000 in equipment and man hours, while all of Lane County had been spending upwards of $20,000 a day during the storm. Schools remained closed through the rest of the week, except the University of Oregon. Life returned to cold, drizzly, slushy normal for a typical Eugene winter.

    The storm became a memory. Businesses had sold through their whole supply of tire chains, some residents resorting to have them shipped in from family and friends from out of state. Kids had enjoyed a week of sledding and amassing small fortunes through offering their roof-clearing services, and life returned to business as usual in the Willamette Valley. But for those who lived through the 1969 blizzard, it will forever remain one of those “where were you when” memories discussed often, like the JFK shooting, moon landing, or 9/11.

    So enjoy the bounties of the storm that has come and gone, UO students, and don’t grumble too much about the roads and paths and bitter cold that remain on campus from last week’s dusting. It may have been fun for a while, but the snowfall that led to epic snowball fights, and even a suspension of a football player through dumb actions by multiple students burying a professor’s car (along with the professor) in snow is now just a memory…and it pales in comparison to what students endured in 1969, the year of the big snow.