If you think it was cold for the parades this weekend, you should have been along the route on February 13, 1899. (Or maybe it was better not to have been.)
That date was the Monday before Mardi Gras (now commonly known as “Lundi Gras.”) To the rest of the world, Mardi Gras was Valentine’s Day. There was no love for the weather in New Orleans though. The polar event would be remembered as “the Great Blizzard of 1899.”
As reported by Mardi Gras Guide publisher Arthur Hardy, historian Christopher Burt described that February as witnessing “the greatest cold wave in modern U.S. history.” There were 45 states at that time and all of them recorded a temperature below zero during this event. The Mississippi River was frozen north of Cairo, Illinois. Large chunks of ice backed up the river at New Orleans and some made their way down to the Gulf of Mexico.”…