'The Children's Blizzard' of 1888 trapped children in schoolhouses across the American Midwest

Blizzard of 1888 | American Experience | PBS

Today marks a somber but also inspiring historic anniversary. On this day in 1888, a blizzard tore through the Great Plains, killing about 300 people, many of them children. We call it the “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” because it came so quickly that many kids were stuck at school or on their way home. What started as an unseasonably warm morning turned into pandemonium as a cloud of darkness and ice swept through Nebraska. Temperatures plummeted 18 degrees in 3 minutes. Ice and snow blew sideways