Cold Front Brings Early Snowfall to Wide Swath of Plains, Rockies

The calendar said it was still summer, but don’t tell that to Nebraska Panhandle residents. Up to eight inches of snow fell Thursday as a cold front broke records across the Plains and Rockies, bringing some areas their first summer snow on record.

In Hays, Kan., a crossing guard dressed as Santa Claus greeted children outside an elementary school, and a Grand Island, Neb., radio station played Bing Crosby’s recording of “White Christmas” as fat, wet snowflakes fell and the chill led some people to fire up their furnaces.

But farmers fearing a crop-killing freeze had to take things more seriously.

“We’ll just have to play the hand we’ve been dealt and hope for the best,” said Larry Greathouse, a farmer near Garden City, Kan., concerned that his milo and soybeans could be devastated.

The snow fell as far south as the Texas Panhandle and was accompanied by temperatures as low as the teens. The National Weather Service issued freeze warnings Thursday as overnight lows were again forecast in the teens across much of farm country.

Roger Elmore, crop specialist at the University of Nebraska extension office, said some soybean farmers could lose up to 50% of their yields. Frost in West Texas could wipe out 1 million bales of cotton.

Soybean and cotton futures prices rocketed higher on the Chicago Board of Trade.

Record lows were set in at least four states--Montana, North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska--as well as record snowfall for this early in the season.

Tree-lined boulevards became limb-strewn obstacle courses in cities along Colorado’s northern Front Range and knocked out power to about 100,000 people.

In Denver alone, 117,000 trees were damaged by the storm, plus another 60,000 in City Park, officials said.

Even President Clinton, who was visiting Colorado, got a taste of winter. His plane was nearly four hours late leaving Buckley Air National Guard Base near Denver, where nine inches of snow was reported by early Thursday.