The Children's Blizzard

Chapter 4 introduces Lieutenant Thomas Mayhew Woodruff, a career officer in the United States Army at the time of the Children’s Blizzard. A well-educated and conscientious man, Woodruff took his work of predicting the origins and movement of weather in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa very seriously. His main failing was that “he lacked imagination” (86) and so could not wrap his mind around any weather event that might be unexpectedly severe. At 12:15 am on January 12, Woodruff submitted his predictions to be sent out via Western Union to the newspapers of the surrounding cities and to other weather stations. His predictions called for snow and high winds, but he did not declare a cold wave warning. Woodruff was relatively knowledgeable on cold waves, having published a pamphlet on their origins and movement in 1885. However, the weather Woodruff foresaw would not meet the exact definition of a cold wave as defined by the Army. The amount of cold wave warnings Woodruff had sent out previously, far more than other signal officers, made Woodruff think it was “better not to cry wolf” (87). Political considerations took precedence over public safety. Woodruff’s position in St. Paul was already tenuous, since his post was essentially an experiment in decentralizing the Signal Corps. Woodruff had been assigned to the weather indication corps from his former position in the infantry. He was given six months of training in meteorology and set out into the field from there. Woodruff, after a decade of fighting in campaigns against Native Americans under General Miles, settled into a peaceful, family-oriented life as a weather indications officer.

At this time, the Signal Corps was embroiled in scandal and petty disputes. The chief financial manager of the Corps was caught embezzling nearly a quarter of a million dollars in 1881 and later escaped from prison and was still on the run when Woodruff joined.

Brigadier General Adolphus Greely assumed command of the Signal Corps in 1887. Although he had been appointed expressly to create order, the scandals and disputes continued under his rule. A “national hero” who had returned alive from a disastrous Arctic expedition in 1884, Greely lost 19 of the 24 men who accompanied him. Greely was universally hated by the men on his expedition for his “dogmatic, stubborn, uncompromising” (95) attitude and his concern for rules over the survival and safety of others. He brought similar thinking to the Signal Corps when he took over. When he joined, the Signal Corps was already known for some stationed observers falsifying predictions to save time or hocking their weather equipment to pay gambling debts. In his first year, Greely fired a hundred Signal Corps employees.

Greely created Woodruff’s position in St. Paul in response to pressure from local interests in the area. The government of St. Paul was keen to have a weather station in their city and not in Chicago so their city could be more prepared for extreme weather. A Minnesota celebrity, Professor William Payne, put pressure on Greely for a weather station in St. Paul, and this forced Greely’s hand. Payne, a Renaissance man who studied mathematics, astronomy, meteorology, and timekeeping at Carleton College, was known for using astronomical techniques to “determine the time more precisely” (98) than anyone in the nation. Carleton College became America’s official time service, telegraph wires connecting the school to the nation. Railroads set their clocks by Payne’s timekeeping. Payne, an eccentric and opinionated man, hated Western Union’s telegraph service, the company that handled all of the Army’s telegraph communication at the time.

When Woodruff arrived in St. Paul to fulfill Payne’s demand for a weather station, Payne was shocked to find that Woodruff did not consider himself Payne’s subordinate. Though Payne was the director of the state’s weather service already, Woodruff’s Signal Corps station answered to the federal government. Additionally, Woodruff intended to continue to use Western Union to send his telegraph weather forecasts, despite Payne’s protests. The two men quickly soured on one another. Payne did everything he could to sabotage Woodruff’s operation. Woodruff, finding that he had “stumbled in to a hornet’s nest”(104) of shady government practices and vicious politics, took his own petty revenge on Payne by operating rigidly by the rules set by the Army, refusing Payne’s ideas for innovation simply because they came from Payne. Payne, at least, believed that communication about the weather took precedent over rules or regulations. Woodruff on the other hand believed that proper procedure was the most important aspect of his work, even at the potential expense of public safety.

On January 11, Woodruff engaged in his usual straightforward approach to weather prediction. He held that if he defined areas of high and low pressure, identified their centers, and tracked the speed and direction of their movement, weather could be reliably predicted with few errors. Without further knowledge about the particulars of these weather conditions, though, the rest of forecasting was closer to “guesswork.” Woodruff knew that a cold front was coming. He knew that cold fronts usually moved down from Canada into Montana. From there, half the cold waves moved southeast, while a quarter went down to Texas. This meant that according to his data, the cold front might hit his areas, but most likely they would be spared.

By 5 pm on January 11, however, the pressure readings from Montana had dropped precipitously, while the temperature rose. This anomaly, when seen through a modern lens, spells disaster, since the warmth indicates dangerously high pressure differentials. Woodruff dismissed it as a fluke. Instead, he used the recorded warmth, currently over Helena, Montana, to rule out forecasting a cold wave, and went to bed at 1 am after sending out his final nightly predictions.