The Blizzard of 1949¬actually a series of storms that began late in ’48¬remains the stuff of legend. From Kansas to the Canadian border, an area nearly the size of France was buried in snow and ice. It begot a mammoth response, Operation Snowbound, entailing Army, Air Force, National Guard, and other personnel who opened more than 115,000 miles of roads, freed over 240,000 trapped people, and fed some 4 million head of livestock.

David Mills of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth recounts that remarkable relief effort, drawing from his upcoming book Operation Snowbound: Life Behind the Blizzards of 1949. The episode offers a window into the post-World War II era, when most rural roads were unpaved, weather forecasting was wildly inaccurate, and few farms had telephones or electricity.