On the 12th of March, 1993, East Tennessee had a storm to beat all storms. One of its titles was The Storm of the Century. When my colleagues and I compared notes a week later, after school finally reopened, some had lost power, some lost water, some lost both. Funny thing is, I don’t remember there being anyone or anything to indicate just how momentous this was going to be. Later, I found out the storm started in the Gulf of Mexico and Florida as a tornado spawning behemoth that traveled up through Georgia and the Appalachians and farther north. The weather men later analyzed this thing to death.

I remember hearing we were going to get a decent snow storm Friday night. “Why couldn’t it have done this on a Monday,” the kids grumbled. “Then we’d get a day off school.” Little did they know.

In Athens, it began before dark so the kids went out to play a little while. When my eleven-year-old daughter came in, she immediately slipped in the hallway and landed on her back on the step to our bedroom. The ambulance drivers made it up our hill and took her to the nearby hospital. That was the quickest I remember getting through an emergency room. She was x-rayed, examined, given pain medication, and sent home before more than a half inch had accumulated. The ‘storm’ didn’t look all that bad as we drove home.
We went to bed early. …And woke up to cold and darkness. No electricity, thus no heat, no lights. Yummy, Cheerios for breakfast when it got light enough to see without a flashlight. Didn’t have to worry about the milk going bad. It was too cold.

We looked outside and there was what appeared to be a foot and a half of beautiful white, fluffy snow everywhere, some drifted even higher. The limbs were bowed to the ground. The snow hung over the eaves of the house; and covered the fences. I was beginning to think we’d have been better off stranded in the Emergency room. While the snow fell, the temperatures were tolerable; snow is a great insulator, after all. As the storm ended, the wind howled and the temperatures plummeted. We were lucky to still have water, and left it running so we’d continue to have some.

Someone had the bright idea of putting the meat out on the back porch. Why not? I brought in a wheelbarrow and loaded it up. It sat out on the back porch under a blanket for two days after we got electricity. The kids played in their snow forts and slid down the road where they didn’t have to worry about any cars. Finally, they had had enough fun and came in to warm up in front of the only partially-effective propane heater.

We learned several things during that first two days—the house was a glorified wind break, but we were grateful for it. Also, there is great benefit to having lots of pets. Two dogs, four cats, a lop-eared rabbit, a hamster, and maybe the bowl of goldfish, do help to keep you warm when you are all huddled up on a full-sized mattress under five quilts in the living room. Another lesson learned—neighbors are a gift from God.

The people across the street got electricity before we did. One of the neighbors offered to roast our turkey. Try carrying a turkey roaster across an icy road. Ha! Our power came on while the bird was cooking. We all shared. Then we reveled in our warm house later that night. That was when we heard some of the horror stories of rescues in places much worse off than we had been.

School was out a full week. We were able to get around about the middle of the week. We finally made it to Ingles by the end of the week. Some of my fellow teachers had trouble getting back to work nine days after the storm. I look back and see how very blessed we were; that the hand of God was over us during the worst blizzard I have ever experienced.

So what is your blizzard story?

Susan Kite is a retired elementary school librarian and author of five young adult/middle grade books, My House of Dreams, The Mendel Experiment trilogy (The Mendel Experiment, Blue Fire & Power Stone of Alogol), and Realms of the Cat. She has also contributed to several anthologies.