Blizzard of 1993
Feb. 4th, 2008 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayfurrWe're a month shy of the fifteenth anniversary of the Blizzard of '93, which still stands as the biggest blizzard I've personally ever been through. I was still in grad school at Vajenyatek in Blacksburg when the storm hit and I wound up spending at least one night sleeping on the floor of my office and drinking bottle after bottle of Cappio bottled cappuccino and eating Cheetos because that's what I had squirreled away in my cabinet. By the time the storm finished, we had something like five feet of snow pushed up against the doors of my building.
My father, a professor at Tech, decided "I Must Clear The Driveway". His half-mile-long, steep, unpaved gravelled driveway. With only his blade-equipped pickup truck. And, like a lot of idiots, he wound up having a heart attack. Some guys had to be fetched out from their houses using front-end loaders and whatever heavy equipment could make it through the snow.
Mom called me at my apartment when the storm was just really socking in to tell me Dad was in the hospital, having had his heart attack, and told me under no circumstances was I to try to walk to the hospital to check up on him. Before she said that part, it hadn't even occurred to me to walk six miles through total whiteout conditions all the way to the hospital. Afterwards...
Well, I was picked up by the police and labeled "a total fscking idiot" about a half mile away from the hospital. They gave me a ride the rest of the way and my father, who was resting comfortably, just about had another heart attack when he saw me come in, dressed in my heaviest coat and swaddled in scarf after scarf. After a while they told me was fine, needed to rest, and made me leave, but at least the cops gave me a ride to campus and I rode out the rest of the storm in my office. Drinking endless bottles of cappuccino and gibbering like an idiot.
Good times, good times.
My father, a professor at Tech, decided "I Must Clear The Driveway". His half-mile-long, steep, unpaved gravelled driveway. With only his blade-equipped pickup truck. And, like a lot of idiots, he wound up having a heart attack. Some guys had to be fetched out from their houses using front-end loaders and whatever heavy equipment could make it through the snow.
Mom called me at my apartment when the storm was just really socking in to tell me Dad was in the hospital, having had his heart attack, and told me under no circumstances was I to try to walk to the hospital to check up on him. Before she said that part, it hadn't even occurred to me to walk six miles through total whiteout conditions all the way to the hospital. Afterwards...
Well, I was picked up by the police and labeled "a total fscking idiot" about a half mile away from the hospital. They gave me a ride the rest of the way and my father, who was resting comfortably, just about had another heart attack when he saw me come in, dressed in my heaviest coat and swaddled in scarf after scarf. After a while they told me was fine, needed to rest, and made me leave, but at least the cops gave me a ride to campus and I rode out the rest of the storm in my office. Drinking endless bottles of cappuccino and gibbering like an idiot.
Good times, good times.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-05 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-05 02:26 pm (UTC)Stan and I were getting ready to leave for our annual beach vacation (this was a year before we married.) We packed the car and set it up that all we had to do was dress and go the next day.
He woke me at 6 am and there were 6 inches of snow in the DC area already. He drove, following a snow plow. The highway was clear by the time we got to Fredericksburg. By the time we hit Richmond, it wasn't snowing. At Williamsburg, where I took over the driving, it was raining. It started raining very hard while we were driving along the road that leads to the bridge over the Sound.
And then the wind stopped. The rain stopped. I was able to drive across the bridge with no foul weather. Driving up the island, we were greeted by ducks swimming across the road. The rental company let us check in early, seeing that we were refugees from a blizzard. Sitting on the deck in Corolla, it was in the mid-60s and sunny.
2 of the 3 other couples who were to join us made it that night. Which was good--that evening the OBX were hit with winds gusting up to 90 mph and torrential rain. We were happy to sit indoors and listen to the wind howl. The next day, we found out we were trapped on the north part of the island because the road washed out at Duck/Sanderling.
It's quite a memory.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-05 05:09 pm (UTC)I sort of enjoy being caught in a big weather event. It makes for interesting memories and good stories and at least provides a bit of variety. A really good blizzard shakes up the normal routine enough that I don't feel so blah for a while afterwards.
I know it's not politically correct anymore to take hurricanes lightly, but I actually sort of fondly recall Hurricane Fran back in 1996. The eye came right over Durham and we lost power for days. A few (not many) people got killed by falling trees and things and needless to say we lost the entire contents of our freezer.
Besides a very, er, romantic evening spent on our screened-in porch (the only even slightly cool spot in the entire apartment), the main thing I remember about that storm is trudging up each morning to the apartment complex's "clubhouse" to take showers in the fitness center. The water was heated by a gas burner and so we could get hot showers. However, the showers were pitch black -- no windows -- and so we had to take turns standing on a chair holding our Coleman lantern up so the person showering could actually see what they were washing. Didn't get power back for close to a week.
Why that strikes me as sort of amusing, I don't know. I really don't. At the time I'm sure I bitched, but still, I can deal with a lot of privation so long as I can get my daily shower each morning. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-05 05:43 pm (UTC)And then there was the Blizzard of January 96, about 3 feet of snow, most offices closed, but mine was open. Corporate tried to dock me leave for missing a day of work until my boss explained the metro was closed and there was no way to get to work. The feds opened on Thursday that week--BIG MISTAKE. People couldn't get to work because the Metro was overloaded and the roads were still unsafe. I told Stan he was taking me out to dinner that night--I was going NUTS being cooped up in our tiny apt. A mall that was accessible by metro was open and we had a quiet and lovely dinner.
Did I mention I truly HATE snow?
no subject
Date: 2008-02-05 05:48 pm (UTC)That's one area in which you and I are very different. I like snow. I don't even mind shoveling or snowthrowing. The only thing I mind about it is slipping around in it when I have to drive in the stuff.
Class got cancelled early on Friday because my customer was thoughtful enough to realize that if we had class all day I'd be driving home from the Adirondacks to my house in Vermont, 100 miles, in the dark on icy, snowy roads with more coming down. So instead I got to drive home 100 miles in near-total-whiteout conditions. Just barrels of fun. I wound up driving up to Essex, New York on I-87 so I could avoid back roads, then taking the ferry across to the Vermont side. It was longer, but less time spent on little twisty back roads.