Snow in Missouri Archives

The forecasters were pretty much right. They promised us a wintery mix, and we got the whole gamut: rain, freezing rain, half an inch of ice and about five inches of snow here on Kingsway in Cape.

Here is my standard photo looking across the street to the Bolton house.

Wib’s emergency

When the weather started to look iffy, I figured I should journey to Wib’s, remembering when I made a similar pilgrimage in 2013.

An outside combo, with French fries, slaw and iced tea fueled me up for a trip to grocery stores.

Empty shelves at Schnucks

I went to Schnucks specifically looking for key limes and bacon-wrapped pork steaks. They had neither.

I asked the guys in the produce and meat departments if they were hiding any, but they said the supply truck hadn’t arrived, but it should be there the next day.

I thought there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hades of that happening with the forecasts for the rest of the week.

A combination of supply chain issues and panic buying left many shelves virtually empty. Click on any image to make it larger, then use the arrow keys to move through the gallery.

Studded tires will start you, but not stop you

1966 minor crash on icy street

There was a time when I would have fired up the old 1959 Buick LaSabre station wagon and roamed all over town documenting the wintery weather, but I’m older and wiser, and the Buick has long since gone on to its eternal reward. (Dad gave it to one of his workers to haul firewood on his farm. It was a straight-ahead vehicle, meaning that it no longer worked in reverse.)

Here is where I learned in 1966 that studded snow tires might help you get started on ice, but they didn’t do diddly when it came to stopping.

The guy in the black car was on the wrong side of the road when I was heading down the hill.

Roughly five inches

While I was visiting family in South Carolina and Florida over the holidays, the birds emptied about 2/3 of the bird feeders in the back yard. The ice storm froze the ropes and pulleys I use to hoist them past the squirrel zone, so I couldn’t do much for them.

I saw some woodpeckers looking at the few pitiful scraps of suet block, so I managed to replenish that feeder.

I used a measuring cup to fill a feeder down low, then promptly left it hanging on a Shepard’s crook. When I went outside the next morning, it had about five inches of snow in it. I couldn’t get any wind or precipitation readings from my weather station because it was a solid block of ice.

Heated water dish

Before Phoebe the Bleeping Cat was granted indoor privileges a couple of winters back, I kept a heated drinking dish for her. I bought a kiddie pool to hold water for all the back yard livestock, but it was frozen so solidly that even a posthole digger wouldn’t break the ice.

The dish stays liquid even if the rest of the world is a white, solid mess.

Cool mailbox

After a distracted driver mowed down my mailbox, I replaced it with this bigger one so the carrier doesn’t have to make as many porch deliveries.

USPS has this cool app that lets me see what mail is coming, so I didn’t have to wade through the snow to see there was nothing in the box that was urgent.

Snow covers a multitude of sins

Nothing like a fresh blanket of snow to cover up all the ugly parts of my front yard.

Older and wiser, remember?

I walked the perimeter of the yard checking for damage, but I was pretty much OK except for some minor limbs down.

I saw several people leaving stores with sleds under their arms, but I opted out of trying to sled down the hill on the west side of the house.

In fact, when I was in Buchheit’s last week, I saw some handy ice cleats that were nice to stick on my rubber boots. I have some hip pain, but I’d prefer not to break what I’ve got.

One of the first things I did when I woke up this morning was to check the weather in Cape to see how much snow had fallen. Mother said she was up most of the night. “I’d go to sleep for a couple of hours, then wake up and sit at the window watching the big flakes swirl down.”

I spent some time listening over the Internet to the Cape cops and the Missouri Highway Patrol. Sounded like a lot of folks didn’t heed the advice to stay off the road. It must have been a good day to own a wrecker company (and a bad day to be a wrecker truck driver).

“Look in the front yard. NOW!”

While my mind was focused on cold and snow, Wife Lila headed out the door to walk on the beach. A few minutes after I heard the door slam, I got a text message: “Look in the front yard. NOW!”

That’s usually not a good message. Still, I hurried to look out the window.

Holy Cow! The front yard is covered in white. Drifting white. Drifting white with feet and beaks.

It’s an ibis invasion

It was an invasion of American White Ibis. They are common in South Florida, but we don’t usually get them in our yard. They prefer wetlands where they can feed on small fish, crayfish and aquatic insects.

I kept looking to see what they were eating out of our yard, but I couldn’t tell. Several sites I checked said they are “tactile, not visual feeders,” which means they swish their bill around until it hits something worth consuming. They moved across the yard in a hurry, so we must not have been a good cafe.

They sound like spring breakers

A Wikipedia entry reported that “a field study late in the Florida nesting season revealed that on an average day, adult American white ibis spent 10.25 hours looking for food, 0.75 hours flying, 13 hours resting, roosting, and attending to their nests. Much of the time roosting is spent preening, biting and working their feathers with their long bills, as well as rubbing the oil glands on the sides of their heads on back plumage. American white ibis generally only preen themselves, not engaging in allopreening unless part of courtship behavior. Bathing often takes place before preening; ibis squat in water 2–7.9 in) deep and flick water over themselves with each wing in succession. Hundreds of birds may bathe together around the time of courtship.”

Dark ones are youngsters

You might have noticed some dark and some mottled birds in the group.

The story above mentioned “The gray to sandy gray brown juvenile plumage appears between weeks two and six, and face and bill become pink a few weeks later, while the legs remain gray. The irises have turned slate-gray by this stage. Once fledged, the juvenile American white ibis has largely brown plumage and only the rump, underwing and underparts are white. The legs become light orange. As it matures, white feathers begin appearing on the back and it undergoes a gradual molt to obtain the white adult plumage. This is mostly complete by the end of the second year, although some brown feathers persist on the head and neck until the end of the third year. Juvenile birds take around two years to reach adult size and weight.”

Well, at least I didn’t have to shovel the white stuff drifting in MY front yard.

Cape Central High Photos

Ken Steinhoff, Cape Girardeau Central High School Class of 1965, spent half a century in the ink-slinging business for papers in Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.

He retired in 2008 and has been spending time scanning hundreds of thousands of images because “photos once taken as news have grown enough whiskers that they’ve become history.”

Please comment on the articles when you see he may have left out a bit of history, forgotten a name or when your memory of a circumstance conflicts with his.

(His mother said her stories improved after all the folks who could contradict died off.)

Your information helps to make this a wonderful archive and may end up in book form.

Tag: Snow in Missouri

Rain, freezing rain, ice & snow