What a great topic, as we in Virginia really got socked with this icy Nor'Easter! I think anyone who has ever read O.E. Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth" will have a feeling for Mid-Western blizzard conditions. The entire fate of the protagonists rests upon the severe weather they endure. I have, still, a vivid picture in my mind of the dire ending....I first read this classic in high school and it has always stayed with me.

There was a snowstorm scene in "How Green Was My Valley" that was very frightening to me. Don't want to spoil it for anyone else since there is a surprise to it, but I thought about that storm for a long time afterward.

Ginny, I thought of The Long Winter when I saw the title of this thread. I first read it one December night before I wrapped it for a Christmas gift for my daughter and nearly froze before I finished it.

Jack London's short story To Build A Fire has stayed with me since I read it at least thirty years ago. If anyone cares to read it, here is a link.

Here is a link that might be useful: To Build A Fire

The Long Winter is my favorite of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. I can't remember, though, if the winter she was describing was the one of 'The Children's Blizzard' -- 1888, I think -- that is legendary in the Midwest.

Well, perhaps this is not the most impressive snowstorm in literature, but it's still one of the most vivid in my reading experience:
Next morning I awoke, looked out the window and nearly died of fright. My screams brought Atticus from his bathroom half-shaven.

"The world's endin', Atticus! Please do something---!" I dragged him to the window and pointed.

"No it's not," he said. It's snowing."
Jem asked Atticus how to make a snowman. Atticus said he had no idea. Jem and Scout went outside, but he cautioned Scout:"We shouldn't walk about in it...Look, every step you take's wasting it."But with Jem's resourcefulness, he and Scout managed to sculpt "a near libel" of their neighbor Mr. Avery. When Atticus suggested they disguise their snowman, Jem did so with Miss Maudie's sunhat and hedge-clippers. Scout overheard Miss Maudie and Atticus discussing the "erection of an absolute morphodite" in the yard.

Later that night Miss Maudie's house burned to the ground.

To Kill a Mockingbird, of course.

The snowstorm in James Joyce's story, THE DEAD.

I, too, thought of the Wilder book, and two others: I don't remember a particular storm in either, but both left an impression on me.

1. My Antonia by Willa Cather, and
   2) Smilla's Sense of Snow - a book that still makes me shiver.

And I just thought of another _ Snow Falling on Cedars - very vivid descriptions.

frieday, I think of that scene from To Kill a Mockingbird often. Being from the South myself, I remember the absolute awe in which we regarded a snowfall--all quarter inch of it-- that didn't even cover the grass. Believe me, we made the most of it. But Jem's brilliant idea of making a snowman was, to me, a stroke of genius.

As usual, we received not one flake from the storm that recently blitzed the Eastern U.S. But I don't grieve about it as in days of old. I'll settle for reading about it in books.

Prairie School by Lois Lenski made a huge impression on me when I was very young. Children were stranded in their school building for days during a blizzard. I believe the story took place in North or South Dakota.

Those prairie blizzards seem to have made an impression on many of us, in a number of books.

Another favorite of mine is the poem Snow-Bound by John Greenleaf Whittier. It is quite vivid in its imagery of an old-fashioned New England blizzard in pre-industrial times, with no central heating or electricity. He weaves descriptions of the storm with character portrayals of the family huddled within and references to slavery and the Civil War, just ended when he wrote the poem. Whittier was an ardent abolitionist.

We used to have to memorize chunks of this--I wonder if anyone still does. My children didn't.

friedag...I believe I still possess a copy of the book about the children's blizzard. The descriptions were absolutely frightening. I didn't finish it...but skimmed enough to garner a lot of information. I'll have to go back and take more of a look at it.

This is an interesting topic to me. Although I have must have read of snowstorms, the only one I can recall is the one in When Christ and His Saints Slept when Maud/Matilda escaped wearing a white cloak.
Of course there are many references to snowfalls, but I can't recall another storm.
It never snows where I live - in the very coldest of winters there is a small fall of a few flakes on the hills behind Adelaide, but never on the plain where most live. I have been in snow in the Australian snowfields, and had one fall when we lived in Wales, and have to say that I was left unimpressed - it just seemed a nuisance to me, but then I hate the cold and wet.

We didn't get much from that recent Nor'easter but I recall wonderful snow storms in the past when you could barely wade through the thigh deep snow and drifts. It creates a wonderful cozy sense that makes you want to hunker down in your warmest robe with a cup of warmth and a good book!

My favorite children's verse about snow is:

I once thought that snowflakes were feathers,
And that they came tumbling down,
When the MoonLady feathered her chickens
And shook out her silvery gown.

But then I took a closer look
And now I know just what they are .
I caught one today on my mitten
And there was a baby star!

Ginny, I'm sure there are books about blizzards in Scotland . . . if only I could think of the titles. Snowstorms in England are not anywhere near the scale of yours in the US. We have just had a couple of white days and I'll be glad to see the back of them. Freezing outside, marginally warmer indoors (inadequate UK heating system), traffic, rail and air chaos . . . it is the same story every year.

Below is a poem we had to 'do' as school children.

Snow in the Suburbs by Thomas Hardy

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.
A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eye
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.
The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

Another vote for "The Dead", though I base mine on the John Huston movie. It is my favorite movie.

Rosefolly

For the record, the terrible winter described by Laura Ingalls Wilder was the winter of 1880-1881.

rule34, thank you for the year date described in The Long Winter.

Not a snowstorm, but the mention of snow. I've always wondered what signifigance, if any, the hemlock has in this Frost poem.

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

I don't need to read about them. I lived in central Minnesota for 58 years. Living through a blizzard is a lot worse than reading about one. But, you all enjoy.

Carol

For poems about snow and cold, it's hard to beat, "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

I've included a link.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Cremation of Sam McGee

Oddly enough, I don't remember anything of the Wilder series except for that blizzard. I think that must have been my favorite part.

Was there one particular snowstorm in Dr. Zhivago? Or was it more a leitmotif throughout the novel?

George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series has some vivid depictions of cold weather.

Heinlein has a juvenile, Red Planet, set on Mars, where the government decides to save money by not having the protagonist's community migrate during the winter.

And how can we forget The Terror?

But what I'm remembering are not snowstorms, are they? Just bitter cold.

And wasn't a blizzard an important plot point in The Time Traveler's Wife?

The Sleeper by Gillian White. It has taken me some time to remember the title of this book where a snowstorm sets the scene for dark deeds on Dartmoor. I hadn't come across this author before but have now found she does write some pretty good slightly 'psychological' fiction.

Here is a link that might be useful: Books by Gillian White

The imagined storm in "Silent Snow, Secret Snow."

disputantum - You brought to mind the first book I took out of the library on my own card - The Big Snow.

The Children's Blizzard book by David Laskin.... the Wilder book (of course)... any of the North/South Pole exploration books....

My mum just came back from a holiday in Nepal and said she could see Everest from her hotel window.... I thought that was cool.

Well, Liz, I suppose cool is a pretty good description of the climate around Everest. :-)
I remember years ago reading a children's book called Avalanche but as I can't remember the author I have been unable to trace it.

Sarah Canary-I agree with your choice of "Smilla's Sense of Snow".
Brrrrrrr.

Definitely "Giants in the Earth", but I'm also thinking of one that I read as a very young person about a girl that covers her siblings with her body to protect them, and of course, dies from freezing. I don't recall if it was a book, a short story, or just what, but it truly haunted me for years!

But how about the blizzard that strikes the Nine Walkers in "The Fellowship of the Ring" as they try in vain to surmount Caradhras and are defeated?