What is Wilder Weather?

The lasting appeal of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books springs from her vivid, detailed descriptions of the skies and lands around her and her family. Though she wrote the Little House books as fiction based on her life, Wilder’s accounts of the weather around her ring true. From blizzards to prairie fires, tornadoes to grasshoppers, and floods to droughts, weather-related calamities plagued the Ingalls and Wilder families.

Have you ever read one of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books and wondered...

How bad was the Long Winter, really?
What is “grasshopper weather”?
How did the drought of Laura and Almanzo’s early marriage compare to the Dust Bowl?
Was there really a 4th of July freeze?
How did the climate in Laura’s time compare to the climate now in the same places?
Can someone’s health get better (or worse) by moving to change climates?

Wilder Weather will answer these questions and more!

Piecing together the puzzle of past weather means combining historical weather data, indigenous accounts, and stories like Wilder’s to give a more complete picture of the weather and its impacts. Wilder’s accounts of weather in her lifetime, and seeing her weather through the lens of weather today, builds a bridge to understand the climate of Wilder’s days compared to now and the future.