South Dakota Blizzard Kills Thousands of Cattle

This is from earlier in the week, but I thought there was some interesting information in it:

South Dakota ranchers are facing devastating losses in the aftermath of a blizzard that dropped as much as four feet of snow in western reaches of the state. It has been estimated as many as 100,000 cattle have been killed because of the snowstorm, devastating herds that many ranchers rely on to make a living, FoxNews.com reported.
Sprinkled among melting patches of snow, thousands of carcasses now litter the flatlands where the cattle once grazed. The cattle likely died of either hypothermia or suffocation under the growing snowdrifts, said Silvia Christen, executive director of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association.
“It’s anyone’s guess how drastic this loss will be. The cattle were soaked to the bone. Then the wind and really heavy snow started -- it just clung to them and weighed them down,” Christen told Reuters. “Many of them just dropped where they were walking.” In all, it has been estimated most of the ranchers in the state lost between 50 percent and 75 percent of their herds, as Christen said the state is now looking at cattle deaths into the “tens of thousands if not pushing 100,000 at this point.”

I was surprised so many cattle would die in the storm, but then there is this:

 The snowstorm arrived so early in the season this year that the cattle were unable to grow their heavier winter coats.

One article also mentioned that the cattle were still on more open and remote summer pasture ground, and that normally ranchers move the cattle to more sheltered valleys for winter, but that the storm was so early that it hit before they had moved them. It is unbelievable how fast the weather changes there.