The Blizzard of ‘93

Jan 16, 2022, 12:24 PM

We lived near Franklin, NC at the time, at the foot of a mountain with a stream down the hill from the house and at the end of the road, where the power lines stopped. It was one of the few times I remember the weather people being spot on with their predictions. It snowed 30 inches overnight and the wind blew in an arctic blast that drifted the snow to 5-6 feet in places and froze the landscape like a Currier and Ives print. Looking over the valley, no visible roads could be seen, only space where there were no trees and you thought that’s where the roads used to be. I had wisely parked my truck in a church parking lot nearer the main road, about a qtr mile from the house. So the next morning, after I walked widely around the snapped power cable lying in the middle of the street, I slogged my way to the truck and managed to crank it up despite it being encircled by a block of snow/ice 2.5 feet thick. I certainly wasn’t going anywhere, but as I sat there surveying the view, I detected movement in the distance. A young man was wading along where the road was supposed to be toward the general direction of town. By the time he finally reached my location, the truck was warmed up and I shouted at him to come thaw out, which he did. I asked him where he was going and he said his baby needed milk and diapers. I offered to see what we had back at the house that might save him the trip, and explained that no one in town was open if he could even get there, five miles away. I couldn’t talk him back from his mission and he soon continued on his way. It was six days before we had electricity again, but we had plenty of food storage and a wood stove with mounds of hard wood scrap-ends from the nearby sawmill. We cooked, ate, read and told stories with the children by lantern light and went to bed early. The children had a canoe which they loaded with themselves and the cat and sledded down the hill to the stream. The hardest part was that our well didn’t work so we had to haul water up from the stream for flushing and melted snow on the stove for cooking water. It takes a LOT of snow to make a little water. Don’t ask why we had not stored enough H20, because I don’t know. We had it better than most people, though, we heard of folks farther out in the hollows that didn’t get power back for several weeks. Good Times, looking back! Go Tigers!

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The Blizzard of ‘93

I lived in Rabun Gap then.

Great story. A neighbor TRYING to help a neighbor too.

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