Al,
I have never made it up in that part of the country,I have been trhough the southwest and up in to the Rockies as far as Denver. When I was a youngster I went to South Dakota(1965),I have family there.My Uncle told me in later years about how harsh the winters were.He at the time was a radio dispatcher for the South Dakota highway patrol and his depot was 1 block from where he lived, in Kimball was an old converted bomb shelter,he said a blizzard blew up and he had to stay there for 3 days. The bitter cold spells he told me about the highway patrol running the interstates 24/7 they would drive from border to border of the county and meet and turn around and go to the other border and meet on the otherside just to make sure no one was stranded on the interstate.He also told me about the drought in 1988 where they were shutting down dirt roads because of the dust.