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Vintage KSDK: Coast Guard ride-along on the icy Mississippi

We dug back into the 5 On Your Side archives for a look at another time the great river froze, 66 years ago this month.

ST. LOUIS — The Mighty Mississippi is one big river of ice right now.

In this week's Vintage KSDK, we dug back into the 5 on Your Side archives for a look at another time it froze, 66 years ago this month.

It was a February to remember in 1955.

KSDK shot film from the deck of a Coast Guard boat as thick ice clogged the Mississippi.

Our photojournalists caught a helicopter overhead and birds taking wing from the chunks of ice on the river.

The crew needed these hot drinks to keep them warm, but the lowest temperatures of the year were yet to come.

Credit: KSDK
The crew of a Coast Guard boat on the icy Mississippi River uses hot drinks to stay warm, on February 1, 1955.

The thermometer dropped to minus-three on Feb. 11.

An interesting glimpse at newsgathering in the infancy of television.

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