Brumley Family Branches

The November Blizzard 2018 – here in Missouri if you have lived here more than five minutes you know how the weather can change. The Saturday before the blizzard it was sixty degrees, people were walking their dogs, putting up the Christmas lights and taking care of the fallen leaves in their yard. I went out on Saturday and didn’t even wear a coat.

We had been warned that this could be a bad one but the local weather people thought maybe it would be mostly north of Kansas City. I had talked to my daughter earlier in the week and she said they were predicting six to eight inches in Iowa. Being a Missourian for several years we get in a habit here of sometimes brushing off the bad forecast because we have been fooled before and the storms miss us.

I went out Saturday and got what I needed for baking etc., and it was so nice outside, people were enjoying the weather doing their early Christmas shopping. I took my dog for a nice walk to enjoy the nice day because I knew this could be the last one for a few days.

Sunday morning I got up and nothing was really happening, but as the morning went on it started to rain and as it got colder rain turned to ice. I noticed though that the local weather people were starting to change their predictions slightly. The afternoon approached snow began to fall and the winds were gusty. As the late afternoon arrived we were in full blizzard mode and they had changed the snow amounts to three to six inches. It was at this point that the area sat up and took notice of what was happening.

Highways were shutting down, the airport was shutting down and they were telling people if you don’t have to go anywhere STAY HOME! The snow got heavier and it blew quite a bit along with drifting. The front line had moved farther south than expected and all of sudden it was the November Blizzard 2018.

I was born in Davenport, Iowa, raised in a small town in Illinois not far from Chicago, moved to Missouri to raise a family and I took care of my parents in Kansas. I have been born and raised in this stuff so you learn early to have your act together. As my mother would say get your milk and bread run done before it hits. I also grew up in a Boy Scout family and we lived by the motto, “Be Prepared”.

While going to school in Illinois we had so many snowstorms that if they would have closed the schools down for each one I probably wouldn’t have gotten an education. So you just learned to deal with it. I can only remember one time that they closed the schools in my town and that was when we had twenty-three inches of snow before school was to let out that afternoon. The reason why we were so shocked about getting out of school early was that it had not happened before, although we were not going to complain about it.

Snow in the Midwest happens, sometimes we get a lot and sometimes we don’t but whatever happens, we are a hardy group of individuals who help one another out if need be in these kinds of storms. I decided to do a blog post today but I also have other projects that I can work on if this keeps me inside.

I have started up my Brumley Family Branches Genealogy blog again and have updated some of my favorite posts. Please feel free to share this post with family and friends. If you have questions or wish to add any new information please email me.

Thank you!