1936: When it was Cold, It was Very, Very Cold. And When it Was Hot, It Was Boiling!

If you were living in central Iowa in mid-July 2022, you might have heard commentators remark upon how hot it was in Iowa and wonder whether July 2022 was the hottest July in Iowa history. On July 21st, for example, Matt Kelly told RadioIowa listeners that, hot as it was, July 2022 was not the hottest. Kelly told listeners that that honor—if that's the right word—goes to July 1936 when Iowans had to contend with extraordinarily hot temperatures and precious little rainfall. Several other commentators made the same point.

1936 Photo of snowbound train engine
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A18914)

What made the extreme heat of 1936 July ironic was that 1936 also brought to Iowa one of the worst winters on record. Ice-cold temperatures that year followed an early January blizzard and together they helped exhaust local coal supplies. The deep freeze, which lasted through much of February, killed off livestock, restricted travel, and closed down public schools until such time as the railroads could bring in more coal. In the words of a US Department of Agriculture publication, "...in the short space of about six months, Iowa has experienced the most prolonged severe cold and the most prolonged severe heat in 117 years" (Climatological Data: Iowa Section, vol. 47, no. 7 [July 1936]:61).

Today's post examines Grinnell's experience with the extreme weather of 1936, which gave folk one of the coldest winters followed by what was probably the area's hottest summer.

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Headline from January 2, 1936 Grinnell Register

Cold weather in Grinnell arrived with the 1936 New Year's celebrations. A heavy snow began on New Year's Eve, and, although temperatures moderated the next day, a stiff wind from the northwest caused considerable drifting, temporarily blocking highways as well as the north-south Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad line. More importantly, the snow cover—about 10 inches by the time the storm passed—proved an excellent collaborator for the still colder weather approaching Grinnell.

National Weather Service Temperature Data for Grinnell, January 1936
(https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=dmx)

National Weather Service records indicate that after this first snow passed, Grinnell experienced only moderately cold weather. On January 4th the low bottomed out at +5 degrees and fell three more degrees on the 5th. Over the next two weeks, overnight lows varied, but daytime temperatures remained moderate for the most part. Indeed, on the 12th and 14th Grinnell saw high temperatures of 40 degrees. Townsfolk began to look for a January thaw.

But more serious cold was on the horizon. Overnight on January 18th the thermometer reading fell to zero; the next night it registered -15, and on the 20th overnight temperatures dropped to -22. On the 22nd, when a blizzard hit town, the low dropped to -25; the next night was slightly better (-23), and better yet on the 24th (-13). Then on the night of the 25th temperatures fell again to -22; the last several days of the month all saw overnight lows in the minus-teens. With about fifteen inches of snow on the ground, even daytime temperatures remained cold (Grinnell Herald, January 21, 1936). Several times in late January thermometers saw daytime highs of ten degrees. Most days, however, thermometers never broke zero: -10 on the 23rd; -4 on the 24th and 26th, and -1 on the 27th. On January 27th the Grinnell Register reported that "the mercury has stayed below the zero mark continuously since Monday of last week, with the exception of Saturday afternoon from 3:00 to 4:00 o'clock, when it registered 3 above" (January 27, 1936). 

An Unidentified Grinnell Home, Winter 1936
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A18911)

Grant Gale (1903-1998), who at the time lived on north Summer Street, kept track of the cold in his daily ledger. Problems for the Gales began on January 13 when the "furnace blew up," although what Gale did about the disaster he did not say. Five days later, the second blizzard of the month hit town, bringing along ice-cold temperatures. Gale noted that at noon on January 18th the thermometer read -14; in the morning of the following day it was -15, and -22 on the 20th. January 22nd brought a "terrible blizzard," "heavy snow," and a low temperature of -27. Gale reported below-zero readings for each of the last days of January. In a later interview, he recalled that

we had this terrible northwest wind that swept across the football field. We lived over this way. It was twenty-five below zero and I remember staying home that day...I just shoveled coal in one door and ashes out the other...I think the warmest it got that day was twenty-five below zero. And this wind just swept across the campus (Grant O. Gale Interview).

Even in January, not everyone had coal. Rose Stoops (1895-2001), who in 1936 was living on a farm near Deep River, wrote that, because snow had blocked roads to the coal mine at What Cheer, they ran out of coal already in January. Consequently, "our fuel was anything we could burn, old fence posts, an old maple tree that a neighbor had helped Harry cut down...We survived the winter, but my canned goods froze in the cellar." Grant Gale learned that some farmers resorted to burning corn; "we didn't have anything else to burn," they told him.

All across the area householders discovered frozen pipes, generating lots of work for those plumbers who could get through the snow. Freezing temperatures also stilled automobiles, flooding local garages with requests for help (Grinnell Register, January 23, 1936). The Herald reported that the "bitter northwest wind...swept down straight from the north pole, causing countless frozen cars and fingers and piling up [snow in] the newly opened roads..." (January 24, 1936). 

Photograph of Unidentified Grinnell-Area Farm, Winter 1936
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A18913)

The extreme cold slowed the work of plowing roads, especially in the country. "There are still many Poweshiek county families who find it almost an impossibility to get to town to do their trading," the Register reported on the 27th. Dick Sears (1914-1992), who lived on the Penrose Avenue extension, about seven miles north of town, in a 1992 interview remembered that 

in 1936 the roads was [sic] closed for everything but teams [of horses-dk] for a month. There was one full month that there never was a car went by here. We used teams—bobsleds—to get to where the road was open. Usually you had a bunch of neighbors who'd go in on the bobsled to get groceries in town and come out along the way. And the mail was the same way. The mail couldn't get through, so maybe once a week or every two or three days or something somebody would get through so they'd bring all the mail for his neighbors along the way (Richard [Dick] Sears Interview).

Truckers found themselves marooned in town if they weren't so unfortunate as to be stranded out on the road somewhere.

February 1936 Photograph of Ernie Renaud, William Belcher,and Forest Belcher atop a snowdrift as an automobile passes through cleared roadway (Grinnell Weather Events, Snowstorms, Drake Community Library Archive, Pamphlets, 5.4)

Crews kept the main roads mostly clear, but country roads were repeatedly "choked by drifts." "The Cold Wave Is Still On," the Herald announced on the 31st, pointing out that the "thermometer went to 19 below last night" (Grinnell Herald, January 31, 1936). As National Weather Service data confirm, January 1936 in Grinnell was about ten degrees colder than normal.

Page 5 of Grant Gale's 1936 Ledger (Grant O. Gale Personal Papers, 1850-1995, Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives, US-IaGG MS/MS 01.115, Box 5, Item 5)

February brought no relief. Gale's ledger reported a temperature of -16 February 1st, -3 on February 2nd, followed on the 3rd by the "worst blizzard in 20 years." Gale observed below-zero temperatures every day until February 8th, which saw what Gale called the "worst blizzard since 1900." After the storm passed, the ledger shows that temperatures plunged precipitously, bottoming out at -18. On the 9th Gale reported that he and his family were "snowbound," the thermometer dipping to -18 on the 9th and 10th, and -17 on the 10th and 11th. A brief moderation in temperature soon gave way to more frigid weather. Gale recorded a low of -15 on Valentine's Day, -10 on the 15th, -13 on the 16th, and -12 on the 17th. The bitter cold finally broke on the 20th, but not before recording a -20 on the 18th and -15 on the 19th (Grant O. Gale Personal Papers, 1850-1995, Grinnell College Special Collections, US-IaGG MS/MS 01.115, Box 5, Item 5).

Grinnell Register, February 10, 1936

As a consequence of the extended cold wave and the snow blocking roads and railroads, coal supplies were exhausted. In early February school officials, explaining that the downtown junior and senior high schools consumed between four and five tons of coal a day, announced that they could not risk running out of coal entirely, which would lead to freezing the building's pipes. With snow preventing delivery of more coal, the superintendent thought it best to cancel classes until a sufficient supply was in hand. The grade schools had not yet burned all their coal, so Parker, Cooper, and Davis remained open for a time, but then they, too, closed (Grinnell Herald, February 4, 1936; ibid., February 17, 1936). The high school and junior high reopened briefly, once some coal reached town, but classes were canceled for almost two weeks (Grinnell Register, February 6, 1936; Grinnell Herald, February 17, 1936). 

As if to illustrate the problem, the Herald reported that on February 3rd a freight train was stuck in Grinnell-area snow drifts said to be a quarter of a mile long and ten feet high. A Rock Island freight sank in snow east of town, requiring several hours to extract the engine and caboose; a passenger train reached Grinnell three hours late, then stalled at the High Street crossing for a half hour when the engine froze (February 4, 1936). Snow drifts were everywhere and often so deep as to render light snow plows useless (Grinnell Herald, February 11, 1936; Grinnell Register, February 10, 1936). 

A Photo of an Unspecified Train Being Shoveled Out of Snow Drifts, Winter 1936
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A18912)

By February 10, concerns about a coal shortage resurfaced, as 26-mile-per-hour winds blew accumulated snow back across roads and railroads only recently cleared of drifts. The planned resumption of classes at the high school did not occur after all, and numerous other items on the calendar were canceled. Some parts of downtown—like the Beyer block on Fourth Avenue, for example—were without heat; Roy Bates (1880-1971) moved his Floral Shop elsewhere until more coal arrived; Joseph Large (1874-1948) installed two stoves to keep his pharmacy operating, and the jewelry store of Frank Bartling (1880-1958) and Richard Nuckolls (1882-1943) had a gasoline heater in operation. The cold and the shortage of coal canceled numerous public events. Athletic contests and club meetings all succumbed to the weather, and a playwright who expected to reach Grinnell in time to oversee rehearsals of his play had to request a postponement (Scarlet and Black, February 19, 1936). 

Scarlet and Black, February 15, 1936

Unlike many householders and the city's public schools, Grinnell College had sufficient supplies of coal (Scarlet and Black, February 15, 1936), and college officials offered to open the men's gymnasium to anyone needing refuge from the cold. The secure warmth of campus, however, did not spare the college president from experiencing the bitter weather. One ill-fated train captured President John Nollen and his wife, who were en route home from a visit to Nebraska when they were stranded for 25 hours near Colfax because of an immense snowdrift. Trains on the Rock Island east-west route were often delayed, newspapers reported, but at least they continued to run. By contrast, trains on the north-south route "have been completely abandoned," newspapers said (Grinnell Register, February 10, 1936; Scarlet and Black, February 12, 1936).

Grinnell Herald, February 11, 1936

The snow and cold proved dangerous to humans and their animals. During a weekend snow, Dave Haines and Ted Youngman, trying to push their automobile from a snow drift just west of town, were victims of another car, whose driver "was unable to see in the blinding storm" and struck the men (Grinnell Herald, February 11, 1936); both Haines and Youngman ended up in the hospital. When fire broke out at a hog house on the T. J. Moore (1891- 1990) farm southwest of town 26 hogs burned to death; the city's firemen "were unable to make the run on account of the raging blizzard and drifts" (Grinnell Register, February 10, 1936). All across Iowa whole farmsteads were leveled by fires made unreachable by the snow (for several cases in Boone County, see H. Roger Grant and L. Edward Purcell, "A Year of Struggle: Excerpts from a Farmer's Diary, 1936," The Palimpsest, vol. 57, no. 1 [January 1976]:15-16).

Grinnell Herald, February 7, 1936

Iowa had had many cold winters, but local newspapers began to describe 1936 as one of the worst. In early February the Herald called January the "most severe in many years" (February 7, 1936). A few days later the newspaper described the weekend blizzard as "One of the Worst Storms Even in Memory of Old Timers" (ibid., February 11, 1936). The Grinnell Register, inquiring of some of the town's oldest residents, told readers that 92-year-old B. A. Stowe "couldn't remember when he had experienced colder weather." Judge T. J. Noll (1843-1943), then 93 years old, thought that he had lived through colder weather, but the worst cold he could recall had taken place in 1862! (January 23, 1936).

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As cold as it had been that winter, summer 1936 turned out to be among the hottest ever in Iowa. According to one account, seven of the hottest ten days in Iowa history came in the summer of 1936, killing hundreds of Iowans. Residents of Des Moines managed to survive fifteen days in a row in which the high temperature reached triple digits.

Extract from the Des Moines Register, July 20, 2019

Summer 1936 was also torrid in Grinnell, but June's weather did not betray the oven that was on its way to Grinnell: only five days in June saw the high temperature reach into the 90s. July, however, was something else. The first few days of the month were hot, if not exceptionally hot. But beginning with the Fourth of July, when the thermometer shot up to 105, Grinnell's citizens endured fourteen days in a row when the daily high reached 100 or above. The first week was torture, but the accumulating heat grew unendurable as the hot spell stretched into the second week: on July 11th the local weather station recorded a high of 104; the next day it reached 105 and peaked at a record-setting 108 on the 13th. The next two days saw only the slightest improvement before the thermometer gradually fell. Only on July 18 did the daily high temperature "cool" to 97 degrees. On the 25th another brief spurt of fire warmed up the town, with the record-setting high temperature of 108 degrees appearing again on July 26th.

National Weather Service Temperature Data for Grinnell, July 1936
(https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=dmx)

Grant Gale (1903-1998) who continued to enter daily temperatures in his private ledger, reported on July 6th the "beginning of hot spell." July 9th was, he thought, "hot," and July 12th "very hot." The next day Gale entered the high temperature—106—and on the 14th recorded a high of 107. Unhappily for the later historian, the Gale family then set off for vacation in Michigan, interrupting this local report on Grinnell's fiery summer (Gale Personal Papers, Box 5, Item 5).

Because of the July 4th holiday, local newspapers also did not comment upon the heat until July 6th. As the Grinnell Herald-Register put it, "old man weather turned on the heat Saturday, July 4, and has forgotten to turn it off so far." Although the hot spell was still only a few days old, the newspaper observed that "the paving on Highway No. 6 west of Grinnell...buckled badly near the Robinson Filling Station" (July 6, 1936). The next issue of the newspaper confirmed that "Yes! It Still is Pretty Hot," listing the high temperatures July 4-9 (ibid., July 9, 1936). When the newspaper hit the streets again on the 13th, it carried word confirming "Tenth Day of Over 100 Degrees," noting that "little relief is in sight." According to the Herald-Register, a thermometer left in the sun on the 12th registered an incredible 136 degrees, "evidence of the type of heat we are undergoing...when in the sun" (ibid., July 13, 1936). The theme recurred in the next issue of the Herald-Register, which observed that "The Heat Wave Is Still in Evidence." A brief article began by listing the daily high temperatures from July 4th through noon on the 16th. The only day on that list that escaped triple digits was the noontime reading on the 16th, by which time the temperature was "only" 97, but on its way past 100 again that afternoon (ibid., July 16, 1936).

Grinnell Herald-Register, July 16, 1936

In boiling weather like this, people in the Grinnell area suffered. Many remarked that sleep indoors was impossible, as the extreme heat had built up within their houses. One effort to moderate the consequences of the heat wave was the installation of a water spray at Davis school. Someone had the idea of inverting a lawn sprinkler over the paved surface west of the school. Twice a day officials turned on the water, providing a cooling spray in which the kids could play: 10-10:30 each morning and again from 4-5 each afternoon. According to local reports, "over 600 children visited the school Tuesday afternoon when the sprinkler was turned on for the first time, and large crowds were on hand again when the cooler was used Wednesday" and Thursday (ibid.). Not everyone made it to the sprinkler, however, and the news began to report on the impact the heat was having on people. By the middle of July more than 200 Iowans had died from the heat. I could not confirm any Grinnell deaths attributable to the weather, but clearly stifling temperatures were having their impact. On July 16th, for instance, neighbors found 91-year-old John Goodfellow (1845-1940), who lived alone at 833 High Street, "overcome by the heat." They helped get him to the hospital (ibid., July 20, 1936). No doubt others—especially the aged and those who lived alone—encountered similar crises because of the heat wave.

Grinnell Herald-Register, July 20, 1936

Because farming was crucial to the Grinnell economy, locals paid rapt attention to the impact of the heat upon crops. J. L. McIlrath (1871-1955), who contributed a column on "Farm News" to the Herald-Register, worried about the corn. "Another whole week has passed," McIlrath wrote in mid-July, 

since we were sure we must have rain at once if growing crops are to survive...The hope of rain has been held out to us from day to day by the weather bureau [and] has kept us in suspense...The grain is so dry and  brittle that much of it is hulling in the threshing process, something seldom ever known before...

McIlrath went on to bemoan the harmful invasion of grasshoppers. "Great swarms of the insects fly ahead of vehicles that pass through the field," he reported to readers (ibid., July 20, 1936).

Dick Sears (1914-1992), one of twenty persons interviewed in 1992 for the project Voices from the Past, remembered that "Grasshoppers just about took for everything green...Alfalfa was one of the things that they liked real well, and they went right in, helped themselves" (Richard Sears Interview). Isadore Berman (1924-2021) also recalled "flocks of grasshoppers" in 1936. "They devoured everything in sight...," he said; "they ate everything that was edible or inedible. Just a tremendous crop of grasshoppers" (Isadore Berman Interview). Marian Dunham (1919-2008) reported a less destructive encounter with grasshoppers in 1936: she thought that "there were some [grasshoppers], chewed up the place a few times," but she did not recall the insects destroying an entire crop. Nevertheless, she remembered that when she went to the farm pump to get a drink, "the pump would cough up a little bit of water and a few corpses of different bugs and that was terribly frustrating" (Marian Dunham Interview). 

1938 Photograph of Corn Shocks 
(Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Sheldon Dick, Photographer)

As McIlrath pointed out, drought was even more damaging than the insects that followed it. The ground, having endured weeks of scorching temperatures without any rain, was very dry; many fields revealed networks of deep cracks. Elmer Powers, who farmed in Boone County, told his diary that as he crossed his fields he thought he could "drop my pliers down out of sight in these cracks" (Grant and Purcell, p. 24). Martin Pearce remembered a barley field which, when seen that autumn, "was just as bare as plowed ground. It never raised a weed or a spear of grass. That dry weather just cooked that whole field." Robert Dimit, recalling his dad's farm, told Frank Heath in 2013 that "there was no crops, no hay" in 1936. To feed the cattle, his father resorted to cutting down the corn that remained and tying it into shocks where it remained until it was fed to the animals (Frank Heath, "Conversations with Iowa Farmers"). 

Undated Photograph of Parched, Cracked Earth
(https://peoplesweathermap.org/the-drought-of-1936/)

Iowa was spared the dreadful black clouds of dust that affected the worst-hit areas of the "Dust Bowl," but that does not mean that Iowans did not feel the effects. As Ginalie Swaim observed, "The clouds of dust did not stop at state boundaries. They hit Iowa, too." She quotes one Iowan from Black Hawk County who saw dust settle "so thickly on pastures that the cattle would not eat, and cows, and calves, and steers wandered about bawling their hunger" ("Dry, Dusty 1936, The Goldfinch, vol. 7, no. 4 [April 1986]:10).

When rain finally came, it arrived with a fury that undermined its usefulness. On July 20 a midday 15-minute "deluge" washed Grinnell, leaving behind a half-inch of rain, much of which disappeared before penetrating the soil (Grinnell Herald-Register, July 20, 1936). Two days later another storm briefly drenched Grinnell, dropping 0.47 inches of rain (ibid., July 23, 1936). 

In some areas the rainstorms also brought hail, bombarding corn fields, stripping anything green left on the stalks. In any case, the momentary respite that rain and clouds afforded came abruptly to an end within a few days, when temperatures once again shot up over 100 degrees. Saturday, July 25th brought a high of 107; on Sunday the thermometer reached 108 (ibid., July 27, 1936). August opened with daily high temperatures in the 90s, before showers brought relief and some moisture for crops (ibid., August 6, 1936). Despite the brief reappearance of 100 degrees in mid-August, a heavy rain on the 22nd finally put paid to a miserably hot and dry summer (ibid., August 18, 1936; ibid, August 24, 1936).

Grinnell Herald-Register, August 10, 1936

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The winter's bitter cold and summer's dessicating heat made the year 1936 memorable in Grinnell. Visions of grasshopper hordes and ten-foot snowbanks survived in memory, despite the passing years and the occasional blips in Iowa weather normalcy. Back then, few saw in weather extremes hints of climate change. Rather, most saw 1936 for what it was—an unexpectedly brutal weather year that ruined many farm livelihoods and made "normal" life in town difficult. As the years passed and memories faded, the sharp outlines of 1936 receded from view, only to be revived when new bursts of heat or cold provoked questions about what was the coldest or hottest year in Grinnell. The records indicate that 1936 is a good reply to both those questions.