The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin

The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin is another book with the theme of people against nature, i.e. wild and unpredictable weather. Like Sudden Sea by R.A. Scotti, The Children’s Blizzard is an account of a freak storm, in this case a massive blizzard that took people by surprise, resulting in destruction and loss of life.
The blizzard occurred on January 12, 1888. It has been nicknamed the “children’s blizzard” because many of the victims were children who were caught in the snow, wind, and cold on the way home from school, got lost, and froze to death. These were the children of immigrant families from northern Europe (Norway, Sweden, Russia, the Ukraine, and Germany) who became farmers on the prairie lands of the Great Plains, lured by the promise of free land and perfect growing conditions. The morning of January 12 started out rather mild for winter in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Nebraska so the children set out for school without hats, jackets and boots. In the mid-afternoon the weather changed violently and suddenly. Government forecasters at the Signal Corps (the weather forecasting center in the 19th century) failed to assess the intensity of the storm. Everyone on the prairies was caught unaware. About 500 people, many of them children, became the storm’s victims.
In the book, Laskin focuses mainly on five families who suffered—either by having to search for and rescue their lost children in the days following the storm or by having to bury them. He also describes wonderfully how the blizzard began and how the wind, heat, and cold fell into position so that such a dynamic storm could develop. Unfortunately, there are no photographs to give you a sense of the storm, but there are memoirs of survivors and descendants to help give a portrait of the day.
Laskin’s writing is so realistic and descriptive that you (as the reader) feel as though you too are living through "the children's blizzard" of 1888, and you don’t even have to wear a winter jacket, a hat and gloves.
If you like reading nonfiction books about the history of weather and blizzards, you might want to try a book about a “black blizzard.” The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan tells the story of the biggest dust storm on record that swept through states from the Dakotas to Texas on April 14, 1935.