Publisher’s Notebook: Longing for snow deep enough to bury cattle

By Willie Sawyers

Just for once, I’d like to have snow up to my kneecaps. I want to walk on a quiet city street with it snowing so hard that it drowns out the street lights. I want it to snow so much that our hectic world is forced to shut down for a while.

We used to have snows like that in Kentucky. Once or twice a year we could count on heavy snow to turn the landscape into a winter wonderland. We could take to the hillsides at Levi Jackson State Park or the London Country Club and launch our innertubes or sleds off of snow ramps into deep snow that cushioned the fall.

We could make snowmen, snow angels and even snow caves. We could stay in our homes for a week, since everything had basically shut down, and cook pots of stew and soup beans that we’d rushed out to the store and bought at the last minute. We could get reacquainted with each other again.

As I get older, I dread cold weather more and more. But I miss the heavy snow. It’s been more than a decade since we’ve had a decent snow. Kids who are in their early teens now have gone their entire childhood without seeing snowfall deep enough to bury cattle, as we did in the Blizzard of 1993.

All we get in this part of the country anymore is teaser snows, despite every effort by WLEX’s Bill Meck to scare up a big one.

Last weekend’s snow is a prime example. It was supposed to be a major winter storm, and some northern parts of the state did get significant snow. But for us, it was mostly rain, freezing rain and light snow.

It did have one surprising element—thunder and lightning amid the freezing precipitation. Late Friday night I was listening as freezing rain hit the window sill and then I saw a bright flash in the sky, followed by a long rumble of thunder. It was almost apocalyptic.

Alas, the snow pretty much melted by Sunday afternoon and was too thin and slushy to have any fun with. Heck, it wasn’t enough to cancel school Monday. A teaser snow.

I remember fondly the Blizzard of 1993, the mid-March snowstorm that paralyzed much of the east coast for two weeks. It dumped about 18 inches of snow on London and produced drifts up to three feet. Heavy snow blew sideways on high winds for more than 24 hours.

I remember letting my dog outside to use the bathroom and losing her in a snowdrift. I remember walking about two miles along a barren KY 192 Bypass to the grocery store to fetch more groceries. It took hours to wade through waist-deep snowdrifts. Everything came to a complete standstill.

I still have video of that epic storm and sometimes I watch it to rekindle fond memories of something that I may never see again in my lifetime, thanks to global warming.

The greatest memory I have of snow has to be the infamous winter of 1978 when it began snowing in January and didn’t leave the ground until mid April. Many of Kentucky’s snowfall records were set that winter.

It’s not often that Interstate 75 is shut down completely, but that’s what happened during a blizzard in late January 1978. The Kentucky State Police shut down most roads across the state. The National Guard had to be called out to rescue people stuck in their homes and cars.

I got stuck in a dorm room at Eastern Kentucky University and couldn’t get home for two weeks. Even if the roads had been open, I couldn’t get my small car out of a snowdrift.

By the end of the second week, we were down to eating peanut butter and crackers three times a day. No one in the dorm had any food left or money to buy anything with. We laughed at our predicament, but it was a desperate situation.

I remember a bunch of us bundling up one night and going on a panty raid to the women’s dorm. But we weren’t looking for lingerie, we were hoping they would throw us out some canned goods, Spam or something. We were like starved, crazed animals roaming the countryside.

I finally had to take a Greyhound bus from Richmond to London. Even after two weeks, only one lane of I-75 was open.

Now that wasn’t a teaser snow.

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