From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 4, 1913:

• “The year of 1912 hung up one weather record in the archives of the Kansas University Weather Bureau — the snowfall for the year was the heaviest recorded in the forty-five years of the K.U. observatory. During the year there was a total fall of 47.65 inches of snow which was 27.23 inches above the former record which was established in 1873. The greater part of this fall came in the month of March when a total of 36 inches of snow was measured.”
• “Fire during the year of 1912 caused a loss of from $40,000 to $45,000 to the city of Lawrence, according to an approximate estimate made by Fire Chief W. H. Reinisch this morning. There were four or five real bad fires during the year that caused the loss to mount to such high figures, [and] several of these heavy losses were caused by the difficulty in getting water to the blaze…. During the extreme cold weather of last January, when the thermometer was hovering around nine or ten below zero, the first real serious fire of the year occurred at the Lawrence National Bank building…. On account of the nature of this fire and the extreme weather conditions at this time, the fire was a hard one to fight, but by valiant efforts of the fire-fighters the blaze was confined to the rooms that were occupied by Judge Norton’s law office and the barber shop. These were almost a total loss and the library belonging to Judge Norton was completely destroyed…. Probably the worst fire of the year was the fire that destroyed the Donnelly feed barn at 704 New Hampshire street. This alarm […] caused the death of the twenty-four horses that had been quartered for the night besides the loss of feed, harness, wagons and other things in the barn.”
• “A small paper sack containing a cluster of artificial flowers and marked ‘fragile’ caused the local post office much annoyance this morning. This had to be very carefully handled so that it might reach its destination without the flowers being crushed. There were other packages of the freak nature evidence of the fact that the Parcel Post is still very much of a novelty.”
• “A good many Lawrence boys seem to have been given guns by Santa Claus. At any rate the reports of squirrels killed and dogs maimed indicate that the use of these instruments of torture is overdone. It is a crime in Lawrence to kill squirrels and it is all of that and more to maim a dog. The city has ordinances on both of these and the marshal is going to enforce them. The killing of squirrels in the parks and in the yards must stop and the officers are going to stop it by arresting some of the offenders.”