How the Pineapple Express Killed the Donner Party

Californians have spent December experiencing the effects of the Pineapple Express . For the most part , we ’ve been happy to get all that pelting . But in 1846 , the Pineapple Express had a quite unlike effect . It contribute to the horrible fate of the most infamous California - bind party in history .

To be fair , a lot of things killed members of the Donner Party , including the Donner Party . No , not just that way . The “ party ” was n’t so much a unmarried whole as a shifting group of masses — and most of them hated each other . They had unspoilt ground to do so . The first major folly of the party started well before wintertime , before they entered what has now become Donner Pass . Their problem start out in Wyoming , when they resolve to survey Lansford Hastings . He told them that he could show them a way to the mountains that would be faster and comfortable than the excellently tough Oregon Trail .

Hasting ’s Cutoff was a itinerary that drive the political party to the south from trail , though the Great Salt Lake Desert in Utah . They steamed during the 24-hour interval and froze and night . Their oxen starve , died of thirst , or were slip . And the member of the party did n’t just cover themselves in gloriole . One hot afternoon , two of the men got into a fight . One carry a party whip , and one a knife . The man with the knife won , but was put off the trail . When the banished man ’s married woman had her last few oxen stolen , the other members of the party refused to help her , and she and her children had to walk behind the wagons . By the time the group got to the Sierra Nevada tidy sum , they were a ragged amoral clustering of people who expend that horrible winter alternately kill , betraying , abandoning , or squeeze one another . Still , they might have made it through live , if the atmospheric condition had been on their side .

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In 1971 , Roland Madden and Paul Julian discovered an interesting cyclic phenomenon over the Pacific and Amerindic oceans . The Madden - Julian Oscillation consist of acute rainfall intersperse with the total suppression of rainwater . It lasts about 30 to 60 day , and it does n’t spend all that time in one lieu . The MJO travel slow eastwards , from the Indian ocean out across the Pacific . Sometimes , just off the sea-coast of North America , it meets arctic strain coming down from the north . The two combining , and dump massive sum of money of pelting over the northwestern United States . The phenomenon was nicknamed The Pineapple Express , since it originates in the tropics . Sometimes it swings a small south , dump rain into California . And sometimes it endures and travel inland , bringing apocalyptic blizzards to the Sierra Nevadas .

This weather phenomenon is what really bring up the decease cost for the Donner Party . The extraordinarily vast blizzards that struck the Sierra Nevadas in the winter of 1847 dumped twenty - two feet of snow .

All that snow made it perfectly unsufferable for the wagons to go on , even if the oxen had n’t starved to death . The political party members who could n’t travel camp out high in the mountains , by Truckee Lake . They sheltered in shanties of sticks plow in moo-cow hides — moo-cow hides that they took from one another for food when thing mystify bad . The snow delay a smaller group , dubbed The Forlorn Hope , who strapped on home - made Charles Percy Snow shoes and seek to go on through the mess . Two members of the Forlorn Hope had fled upon hearing that they would be eat on , but the snow confused them into wandering lost in the mint for days until the remainder of the mathematical group happened to see them . As promised , the group blast and run through them .

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And , in the end , the Baron Snow of Leicester cramp repeated rescue efforts made by soldier at the comparatively nearby Sutter ’s Fort to reach the scattered encampment at Truckee . In the final stage , of the 87 members of the company , 48 made it to California , and all of them became local fable . The Pineapple Express has its own legendary status , but it ’s rather more lighthearted than you ’d have a bun in the oven , weigh the harm it did .

Top Image : Library of Congress

Satellite Image : National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

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