Southern Minnesota’s Near-Miss: The Children’s Blizzard Revisited

SOUTHERN MINNESOTA – The winter of 2025 with its sudden swings, sharp temperature drops and unpredictable storms has reminded us just how swiftly conditions in Minnesota can turn.

Historically, it’s a reminder of one of the most dramatic weather events in our region’s history: the Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888. Though it struck more than a century ago, the story still echoes today, especially for those living in southern Minnesota.

On the morning of January 12, 1888, southern Minnesota woke to something almost forgotten that winter: warmth. After weeks of deep snow and bitter cold, the air finally felt soft.

Farmers stepped outside without the usual heavy layers. Children walked to one-room schoolhouses scattered across the hills and prairies. In towns like Rochester, Austin and Winona, streets were sloppy with meltwater rather than squeaking snow under boots.

No one knew that by afternoon, this gentle morning would become the threshold of one of the most infamous winter disasters in American history: the Children’s Blizzard, a storm that would kill more than two hundred people across the Great Plains, many of them schoolchildren caught between schoolhouse and home.

A gentle morning sunrise over Fillmore County’s Holt Township, 2025 – similar to what Minnesotans experienced the morning of the historic Blizzard of 1888. (Photo by Nancy North)

Southern Minnesota sat at the eastern edge of the storm’s fury. While spared the mass casualties seen farther west, the blizzard still struck hard – blocking railroads, isolating farms and testing the instincts of teachers who suddenly faced life-or-death decisions. It forever changed how people here understood winter’s unpredictability.

A warm morning before the collapse

Even before the blizzard hit, the winter of 1887–1888 had been punishing across Minnesota. Newspapers described repeated storms, deep drifts and long stretches of subzero temperatures.

Yet that Thursday morning dawned strangely mild. Temperatures rose above freezing. The sky was bright. People hurried to finish chores or run errands while the weather felt agreeable.

Later meteorological summaries explain that this warm, calm morning was exactly why the storm would become so deadly across the plains: it lulled everyone into a false sense of safety.

When the front hit: southern Minnesota plunges into chaos

By midday, the storm struck.

Observers across Minnesota described a wall of wind and snow sweeping in with astonishing speed, dropping temperatures by dozens of degrees within hours.

Telegraph reports from communities in the region called it the worst storm of the season, noting fierce winds that drifted snow into impassable barriers, blocked roads and halted trains.

A similar snowstorm quickly makes the roads impassable such as the road conditions shown in this historical photo from a blizzard near Lanesboro in 1901. (Photo courtesy of the Fillmore County Historical Society)

One of the most vivid local markers comes from the Winona & St. Peter Railroad, whose passenger train attempted its regular run toward Rochester. Snowdrifts forced the crew to turn back, unable to push through.

By the next morning, trains along that line were suspended entirely. Railroads were the arteries of southern Minnesota; when they stopped, towns and farms were abruptly cut off.

State weather observers, including those in Spring Valley and Rochester, recorded sharp temperature drops, light but fast-blowing snow and winds strong enough to erase roads and lanes in minutes.

For families across the region, it meant one thing: if you weren’t home when the wind turned, you might not get there at all.

Schoolchildren on the edge of tragedy

The most heartbreaking stories from the 1888 storm come mainly from the Dakota Territory, Nebraska and western Minnesota. In these areas, teachers lost students in whiteouts and children were trapped in freezing temperatures in open fields.

Out on the treeless prairie where distances were greater, the landmarks were fewer and the blizzard’s core was more violent.

Southern Minnesota, with its mix of wooded groves, river valleys and closer settlements, seems to have avoided the catastrophic losses suffered to the west. No widely known account has surfaced of schoolchildren dying here that day.

But that absence is itself a story.

Teachers in one-room schools across the region relied on instinct: watching the sky dim, listening to the windows tremble, sensing the sudden silence that precedes a front. Many made the critical choice to keep their pupils inside, bank the stove, gather extra wood and wait out the storm.

Western Minnesota accounts show that when students were kept inside, they survived; when they were dismissed into the wind, tragedy often followed.

Students during the 19th century, like those shown here at the Red schoolhouse in Peterson, Minnesota, did not have transportation to and from school so a release from school meant all these students were walking home or getting a wagon ride from neighbors. (Photo courtesy of the Fillmore County Historical Society)

How it felt across the region

Newspaper dispatches, railroad reports and weather summaries give us a picture of the storm’s impact across southern Minnesota. Winds up to 50 mph scoured roads and farmyards and formed just a few inches of snow into towering drifts over the already deep snow base.

The experience was described as claustrophobic: snow hammering walls, lamps flickering, livestock bawling in half-buried barns and the very real fear that someone might be lost in the storm.

Travel became impossible and families were isolated for days, relying only on the supplies they had at hand. It wasn’t until long after the storm had passed that folks learned of the far worse tragedy to the west.

A near miss and a lasting lesson

Southern Minnesota stood just east of the storm’s bullseye, and because of that geographic luck – and the instincts of local teachers – the area avoided the mass casualties that gave the blizzard its name. Most of the stories preserved in books like The Children’s Blizzard and In All Its Fury come from farther west.

Even today, a snowstorm brings life to a standstill and one can imagine how isolating it would have been out in the country without modern communication or snowplowing equipment. Shown here, Historic Forestville after a recent snowstorm. (Photo by Laney Smith)

But the storm’s lessons absolutely shaped life and changed behavior of residents in future winters.

Schoolhouses became more willing to shelter children overnight when weather turned dangerous. Communities recognized the need for better weather observation and communication, supporting the growth of the Minnesota State Weather Service.

Families retold their own near misses as cautionary tales for future generations.

It stands as a good reminder to anyone living in rural Minnesota: weather can change everything in minutes. The storm of 1888 may have spared southern Minnesota from its worst, but its lessons still shape the way we understand and respect the power of a Minnesota winter.