Remembering the Blizzard of '93

We woke up this morning to a nice surprise... it was snowing! Big ole' fat beautiful flakes coming down and covering the road and van and a lot of the ground. The kids were so excited and two even braved the freezing tempuatures to go out and play.

But, like every snow we've gotten in the past 10 years or so, it didn't stay. It came, it was beautiful, and then it was gone within hours. It is currently 14 degrees outside, windy, and BITINGLY cold. But no snow. Sigh...

Sweetie and I have told the kids that they don't know what a REAL snow is like! They would just go NUTS with a good 10"-12" of snow!

And that got us to talking about the Blizzard of '93. Anyone else remember that? I sure do! It was March and I was 17-years-old and getting ready to graduate high school in a couple months. Like the good granddaughter I was, I had gone to visit my grandma in her 'old people apartment' after I left my after-school job at K-Mart. Little did I know what a terrible time (for me anyway) it was for a visit with Gram. The snow started falling so hard and so fast that even after a short visit there was no way I was getting home.

The snow fell and fell and fell. As beautiful as falling snow is, this was just beyond crazy. Every time I looked out the window it seemed there was another couple of inches and it was still coming down. For three days it snowed and snowed and snowed. The cars in the parking lot were almost unrecognizable. The drifts came all the way up their sides. The main road outside Gram's apartment building was gone, blending in perfectly smooth with the field on either side of it. No one came up the road, and no one went down. I...was...stuck. In total, the Storm of the Century dropped 22 inches of snow on our area.

I guess I would have probably loved it had I been home in my bed with my TV and my stuff. But here I was, stuck for days in an apartment building for the elderly with my dear grandma, whom I loved and now miss dearly, with no food (except old people food that no 17-year-old would dare put into their mouths) and nothing to do except watch Wheel of Fortune with Gram. Well, that is until she would dose off and start snoring in her chair.

Try as I might, clicking my heels together just wasn't working.

I guess after three days my parents must have gotten tired of my constant calling and complaining because eventually my brother-in-law came to my rescue and took me home. Ahhh... there was never a sweeter feeling. There truly is NO place like home. Ah, but what I wouldn't give to have three days to spend with Gram now.

Here's some interesting information I read today on the 'Storm of the Century'...

"The Storm of the Century, also known as the ’93 Superstorm, No-Name Hurricane, the White Hurricane, or the (Great) Blizzard of 1993, was a large cyclonic storm that occurred on March 12–March 15, 1993, on the East Coast of North America. It is unique for its intensity, massive size and wide-reaching effect. At its height the storm stretched from Canada to Central America, but its main impact was on the Eastern United States and Cuba. Areas as far south as central Alabama and Georgia received 4 to 6 inches of snow and areas such as Birmingham, Alabama, received up to 12 inches with isolated reports of 16 inches. Even the Florida Panhandle reported up to 2 inches, with hurricane-force wind gusts and record low barometric pressures. Between Florida and Cuba, hurricane-force winds produced extreme storm surges in the Gulf of Mexico, which along with scattered tornadoes killed dozens of people."


Read the rest of this fascinating story about the Blizzard of '93 here.