On this day in 1978, National Guard helicopters launched a haylift to reach cattle stranded by massive snowdrifts after a devastating blizzard paralyzed southwestern North Dakota.
Here is the complete story as it appeared in the paper that day:
N.D. storm buries cattle, cars, tractors, buildings
By ED MAIXNER
Staff Writer
“There’ll be snow left here in June,” said Peter Ficek, standing atop a snowbank that covers his farmhouse west of New England, N.D.
The snow might last until June, and it might not. But, nobody is going to stand out there next to his television aerial and call Ficek a liar. He was shoveling a part of the drift from his roof Monday to take the sag out of the eves of the house.
Ten or 12 feet of snow is not a spectacular drift in southwestern North Dakota. Every protrusion from the prairie that will stop a snowflake — every corral, shelter belt and farm yard — boasts of what eight days of snow and high winds can do.
There are cattle under those snowbanks, and cars, trucks, tractors, trees and things people won’t find, maybe until June.
A lot of snowplowing and snow shoveling was going on in West River country late last week, between onslaughts of the storm. On Monday, only main highways were open. Other roads remained passable only with four-wheel-drive units; some, not at all.
Following a disaster declaration by Gov. Arthur Link last Friday, two Air National Guard helicopters were waiting Saturday to lift hay to stranded herds of cattle. They waited, too. On Monday morning, the helicopters and crews were still waiting at Amidon while new snow fell and more wind blew. Then, there was no hay for the lift.
“We got the choppers and we’ve got good weather,” said Patrick Lorge of Amidon, a coordinator for the haylift. “But there’s no hay to haul.”
Lorge said his group had been searching the area for hay. But, with the early snow cover this year, cattle in the range areas were fed hay earlier than usual and it’s in high demand. Most stockmen needed the hay they had, he said, or they had already sold what they had to sell.
At noon Monday, the choppers began lifting hay from Marmarth, where a truckload had arrived. The helicopters each carried five loads (30 bales or about 1,700 pounds per trip). By then, a semi-truck shipment arrived at Amidon from Dickinson, and the Guard crews completed three trips before nightfall.
Most of the hay went to stranded herds of cattle in the North Dakota Badlands area, said Al Rotering of Amidon, another coordinator for the lift. Ranchers there have cattle that are wintered in shelters on the range, and the cattle were isolated from any food sources for up to a week.
But the haylift is only a limited way of preventing further loss from an already devastating event. Most of the damage is already done.
Donald Stegner, who raises hogs east of Amidon, lost much of his herd when the pigs became trapped in a blizzard-made swimming pool. Snow drifted in and filled the front of the hog sheds, Stegner explained. Then the heat from the hogs melted snow that drifted into the rest of the shelters. The pigs were left in a pool of mud.
“The bottom ones were drowning in the mud,” Stegner said. “You couldn’t believe the mess. We threw bales of straw into the mud for the hogs to get on top of,” he said, “but, in a 70 mile per hour wind, you can only do so much.”
Joe Rebel, a dairy farmer with 50 cows east of New England, poured about 500 gallons of milk into the snow last week. After milking for three days, he had filled his 600-gallon storage tank, and then dumped three days of produce onto the ground.
The dairy at Dickinson that picks up Rebel’s produce, Western Dairy Products, returned to its normal pickup schedule Monday, said Alan Sanford, manager. Sanford said several of his producers were forced to dump milk, one as much as 30,000 pounds.
Most of last week’s mail for rural New England residents was still stacked in the New England post office Monday morning. “The place is full of mail,” said Vernon Gentz, rural carrier.
Gentz and the other carriers went out Monday for the first time since Feb. 4. Gentz said he would run as much of his route as his vehicle could reach.
“I’ve been running this route for 30 years, and we’ve never had a week of mail backed up,” Gentz said. There have been up to two days of backlog after blizzards in past years, he said. In the worst winters Gentz can remember, 1946 and 1947, “we used airplanes and we ran a whole route in a half hour sometimes.”
The roads are much better than they were 30 years ago, Gentz said, and the Postal Service doesn’t air drop mail because of past experiences in losing bundles in snow drifts.
“I don’t know, maybe I’m just getting chicken,” Gentz said. “I’m not 23 years old anymore like I was when I started, and I suppose a two-foot drift looks like a four-foot drift looked back then.”
date: 2026-02-14 06:15:00
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