"No place to go on 75th" the caption reads for this image published in the Jan. 23, 1964, edition of The Village Squire. According to the Squire, James Bush (left) was hired to clear the sidewalks of piles of snow left by plows that had cleared 75th Street in Prairie Village. Youngster Steve Prine looked on as he tried to navigate the still-covered sidewalk. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.
Correction: The “October Surprise” snow happened in October 1996. An earlier version of this story mistakenly said it occurred in 1997.
Forecasters say upwards of a foot of snow could fall in parts of the region, settling over a layer of potentially thick ice that will start coming down in the form of freezing rain on Saturday.
At the very least, the National Weather Service says there’s a near-certain chance that much of Johnson County will get at least four inches of snow before the system moves out of the area by Monday morning.
It’s been a few years since Johnson County has seen snowfall that significant but it wouldn’t be completely unprecedented.
There was the “October surprise” of 1996, when more than six inches fell just before Halloween and caused widespread mayhem.
And though nobody may now remember it, the biggest blizzard on record in the Kansas City region remains the storm on March 23, 1912, when more than 20 inches came down in a single day.
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All that to say: be prepared, stock up on groceries, find your blankets and rock salt and know that Johnson County has survived such wintry tempests before.
Here are some archival images of snowstorms past in Johnson County, all found at JoCoHistory.org and republished here with permission from the organizations who own them.
A group of young people stand near a tall pile of snow in front of the old St. Agnes school on Adams Street in Westwood in the winter of 1940-41. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.A snowball fight breaks out among a large group of boys outside Shawnee Mission Rural High School (now Shawnee Mission North) on Johnson Drive circa 1940. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.A black and white photo tinted with color of streetcars on the Strang Line stopped by drifts of snow, circa 1910. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.A young Karen McGee stands in snow up to her knees in the winter of 1959-60 in Urban Mission Township, a community which was later incorporated into Overland Park. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.A group of boys helps clear the sidewalks at the Kansas School for the Deaf in Olathe after a 1960 snowstorm. Photo courtesy the Kansas School for the Deaf.A vehicle slid off the road into a snowy ditch near the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant in De Soto in February 1956. Snow chains are visible on the car’s back tire. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.A snowy scene outside a home on Quivira Road in Lenexa sometime in the 1940s. Photo courtesy city of Lenexa.A crew with shovels and a plow clear a roadway in downtown Olathe on Jan. 19, 1949. Photo courtesy Olathe Public Library.Siblings Chuck and Jackie Magerl play in the snow circa 1960. According to this photo’s donor, the building in the background is the old Milburn Junior High School, on the site of what is now the Shawnee Mission Center for Academic Achievement on 71st Street in Overland Park. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.High schooler Arlen Elliot, sporting an FFA jacket, leads a calf through the snow somewhere in Johnson County, circa 1952. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.A group of students from the old Clare School in Gardner gather in the snow circa 1929. The boy on the far right is wearing ice skates. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.Winter at Warrens’ Christmas Tree Farm in Olathe in February 1990. The Warrens ran the tree farm off 159th Street from 1985 to 2004, according to the Johnson County Museum. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.A man and his granddaughter navigate a snowy street in Leawood after a winter storm some time in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.The caption for this picture featured in the Shawnee Mission South Heritage yearbook for the 1978-79 school year reads, “As the snow piles up, so does the homework. Feeling the pressure, Lisa Godfrey, Amy Malone, Beth Stooke and Wendy Godfrey, wait for spring.” Photo originally appeared in the Shawnee Mission South Heritage 1979 and is republished here with permission of the Shawnee Mission School District.Rusty Leffel (before he became a loyal Johnson County Post reader) stands in a snowdrift outside his family’s home in Mission Hills around Christmas 1957. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.On Christmas Eve 1997, Shawnee Mission East student Ben Heaivilin spent nine hours constructing a football helmet out of snow, according to the Shawnee Mission East Hauberk yearbook. Photo was originally published in Shawnee Mission East Hauberk 1998, courtesy Ben Heaivilin, and republished here with permission of the Shawnee Mission School District.A man in a snowy driveway along Slater Street in Merriam following a storm in November 1990. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.A dog named Bridget, owned by the Snyder family, got outside in Shawnee following a winter storm in 2004. Photo courtesy Johnson County Museum.A Shawnee Mission East student gets a taste of snow during the “October Surprise” storm of 1996, which ultimately dumped more than a half a foot of snow around the region, leading to widespread tree damage and power outages. Photo originally appeared in Shawnee Mission East Hauberk 1997, credit Brian Provo, and is republished here with permission of the Shawnee Mission School District.
Hi! I’m Kyle Palmer, the editor of the Johnson County Post.
Prior to joining the Post in 2020, I served as News Director for KCUR. I got my start in journalism at the University of Missouri, where I worked for KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate. After college, I spent 10 years as a teacher and went on to get a master’s degree in education policy from Stanford University.
Have a story idea or a comment about our coverage you’d like to share? Email me at kyle@johnsoncountypost.com.
