Fifty years ago today, a massive snowstorm brought chaos to wide sections of Iowa.
Called the “Storm of the Century,” the blizzard claimed 58 lives in the Midwest, including 15 in Iowa.
Ed Porter was a photographer for the Sioux City Journal in 1975. He’s 90-years-old now and recalls flying overhead to photograph snow drifts up to 20 feet tall that were shaped by 16 inches of snowfall and powerful winds.
“It was just pure white, except you’d see a bump in the road where the car was stuck, the train with the plow on the front of it, being totally bogged in,” Porter says, “the cattle and all the other things that were going on.”
Porter says the wicked storm was one of the highlights of his long career, which also included coverage of the crash-landing of Flight 232 and several presidents including Truman, Carter, and Reagan.
“We were so cold coming back that we could hardly move,” he says. “They had to cut me out of the seat belt ‘cause I was just about froze stiff.”
Governor Robert Ray declared 40 counties in northwest and western Iowa disaster areas. An estimated 100-thousand head of livestock died, and thousands of people were stranded in their cars.
