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horses' heads were not visible … It was difficult to breathe and utterly impossible to keep my eyes open against the driving snow … The cold was piercing," according to Duernberger's account in The South Dakota Historical Society's bulletin The Wi-Iyohi.
• A brief break in the storm enabled him to recognize a landmark and realize where he was. He was able to get his horses in the barn and start for the house. He was guided to the house by the sound of his wife blowing on a trumpet.
• "It was but eighty minutes since I had left for the well. An eternity, however, had elapsed."
• Sadie Shaw wrote her brother and sister that the wind knocked her down when she attempted to go to the coal box about a rod (about 5.5 yards) east of her sod house in the Platte/Geddes area. Her husband had gone to get their children from school when he realized a storm was coming. He returned home safely after being in the storm for about an hour, unsuccessful in his attempt to reach the schoolhouse.
•  "Oh the agony of that hour no one can tell," Shaw wrote in her letter contained in 900 Miles from Nowhere: Voices from the Homestead by Steven R. Kinsella. "The storm grew wilder colder and thicker every moment until it seemed to breathe nothing but Death and Death inevitable in its every gust. You could not see 3 feet from the window at times and not 6 feet ahead all day."
• A combination of gale winds, blinding snow and rapidly dropping temperatures made the storm dangerous. The Signal Station at Huron reported that the wind averaged 45 to 50 mph, with gusts up to 60 mph. The temperature fell from 20 degrees at noon to 17 degrees below zero at 10 p.m., further dropping to 28 degrees below zero during the night.
• The storm abated early on Jan. 13. Shaw's husband went for the children and found them all safe.
• Others were not as fortunate.
• The Wi-Iyohi listed the names of 178 people who perished in the blizzard in South Dakota. Many who lay dead on the prairie were children who were caught on their way home from school. In The Children's Blizzard, author David Laskin states that about 500 people in the Dakotas, Nebraska and Minnesota perished in the storm.
• Coursey was one of the fortunate schoolchildren, as his teacher kept her flock of pioneer children in the schoolhouse while the storm raged and into the long, cold night.
• In the morning of Jan. 13, the teacher saw that the storm had died out, took the

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