Last weekend (Oct 4-5) left tens of thousands of cattle dead in the high plains of South Dakota. Estimates vary from 20,000 (CNN) to 100,000 (Fox News). The fatality rate is so high due to the timing of the storm. Few herds had been moved to winter pastures. Cattle hadn't developed their winter coats yet and were subjected to 12 hours of freezing rain before the storm turned to snow for another 48 hours. Regions in western South Dakota saw losses up to 20% of their herds. Individual ranchers may have had losses as high as 50%. Snow and winds as high as 70 mph drove cattle from their pastures leaving a trail of dead behind.
Martha Wierzbicki, emergency management director for Butte County, said the trail of carcasses was a gruesome sight across the region.
“They’re in the fence line, laying alongside the roads,” she said. “It’s really sickening.”
http://rapidcityjournal.com/...
Adding insult to injury, US Federal agencies that normally handle such emergency are shutdown. Even were they open, funding levels for the 2014 programs in the Farm Bill which handle disaster relief haven't been established yet.
The heart of the storm was in western South Dakota where as much as 58 inches of snow fell. But even in the east, in Rapid City, Oct 4 was the snowiest fall day and the third snowiest overall. The two days with higher snows on record were from spring snows. And the 19 inches that fell on Friday in Rapid City smashed the previous October one-day-record of 9 inches.
The storm is also blamed for four human deaths in South Dakota and storms and tornadoes in Nebraska and Iowa which killed 15 more.
5:05 PM PT: Update: RainyDays points out in the comments that many horses, working animals and companions, were lost as well.