One look at the bright blue sky on this mid-March afternoon and you’d never have the idea that this was the 20th anniversary of a notorious winter weather event here in the greater Tennessee Valley.
The Blizzard of 1993. Bomp. BOMP. BOMMMMMMMMMMM!
Twenty years ago today, a three day snow event started just before Holly’s first birthday. By the end of that period in Knoxville, we wound up with more than 15 inches of the white stuff. Needless to say, anyone who didn’t make a pre-storm run to Kroger for milk, bread and tee-pee was out of luck. For a few days, the town was pretty much at a standstill.
I remember the Friday night the snow started, I was out to dinner with friends. As we enjoyed our meal in the Old City, we watched the snow start falling. By the end of dinner, the weather situation had started to deteriorate. I was barely able to get home that night and, even still, I had to park on the street because the driveway at our first house – where we were living then - was already too slick to climb.
Once I got safely home, though, our young family enjoyed being snow-bound. We took Holly out a couple times for her first introduction to snow. Mostly, I think she just enjoyed the complete attention of her mom and dad for those three days.
These days, she kind of scoffs at the notion that the snow event in March 1993 was really a ‘blizzard.’ Generally, we’re bigger fans of the dessert treat you can buy at a Dairy Queen! (And we frequently do that whenever we travel and encounter a DQ).
I’m not sure how the weather folks classify that term, however. In some places up and down the eastern part of the country, there was much more snowfall than just a foot or so. And some locations far south of here – places that rarely get snow – got a healthy dose that weekend.
Still, we enjoy looking back at that fun period of our life – that first birthday cake and the first real snowstorm.
JG
(Source: knoxnews.com)
Originally posted 3/12/2013
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