Nebraska Stories: The Blizzard of 1949, 503

Clip from the 2008 NET Production "Beef State" highlighting the Blizzard of 1949, a series of snowstorms between November 1948 to February 1949 that caused trains to stop, houses to become buried, and threatened millions of head of cattle in four states. In some places, 60 inches of snow fell. In response to almost 2 million cattle and sheep being stranded and hungry, the Air Force launched Operation Haylift and used C-47, C-45 and C-82 cargo planes to drop bales of hay to feed livestock. On the ground, the Army used vehicles outfitted with extra traction to reach the people stranded in parts of Nebraska that were hit hard by the storm. This operation was known as Operation Snowbound.