A snow day in the South

It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, watch out! Some people can’t imagine seeing snow in Charleston, South Carolina… especially during those 97-degree-and-humid summer days. Well, it does happen every once in a while… and you better believe people lose their minds when it does. The city completely shuts down, basically. Call in the dogs and put out the fire, we’re hunkering down for the duration. What many people up north don’t understand (because they don’t show it on the news) is that places like Charleston don’t have fleets and fleets of snow trucks equipped with plows and salt… they have boats instead. To make matters worse, people who aren’t from here don’t understand the geography of this town – and that is you have to cross a bridge to get just about anywhere. The Charleston harbor is formed by the convergence of three rivers, making just about every part of town either its own peninsula or island which severely limits your transportation options. When one road shuts down (especially a major one,) all hell breaks loose… and that’s when the weather is good!

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that when it rains somewhere that has a lot of bridges then freezes overnight, you aren’t going anywhere the next day. Especially when there aren’t any salt trucks coming your way. A good half inch or better of freezing rain followed by sleet made traveling on major roadways damn near impossible. So, basically all of Charleston shut down yesterday. Mommy B and I were notified not to come to work and the kiddos school was closed too. Both being from Ohio, Mommy B and I couldn’t help but laugh. We recalled having 4-6 inches of snow on the ground in Ohio and getting maybe a 2-hour delay. But we shrugged it off and decided to make the best of it.

About mid-morning, actual snow started falling outside, so we decided to bundle up the kids and take them out to see it. If my memory serves me correctly, we haven’t had any real snowfall in Charleston since February, 2010. No, I don’t have a photographic memory regarding the weather. Although, since it rarely snows down here one would think you’d remember each date it happens. The only reason I remember that specific date is because Mommy B and I were supposed to fly to Maui the next day but ended up having our flight cancelled. If you thought driving down here in snow was bad, that’s nothing compared to flying. Anyway, that was also the night we found out we were pregnant with Alli. It was quite the special occasion, indeed.

We all went out into the backyard to see the magic. Alli has seen snow in Ohio before, but I couldn’t recall if Aiden had ever seen anything like it. There really wasn’t any snow on the ground, just a thin sheet of ice on everything. It was probably about 25 degrees or so when we went out, so everything was still nice and frozen. The kids had a blast picking all the icicles off the patio furniture and throwing the piles of sleet at Scarlett, who was having a ball (just like four years ago). We then went out front and scraped a bunch of ice off my car and the mailbox. Mommy B and I even got some pictures and video of them playing around in what is a pretty rare sight for this town. However, the fun didn’t last too long before the kids started getting cold and were ready to come back inside. A little later on, we ventured out to the grocery store to grab a few things we might need for this weekend. Luckily we only had to cross one bridge (yes, just to go to the grocery store) and it wasn’t in horrible shape. That didn’t stop the Charleston drivers from going 25mph across it, but that’s beside the point.

All in all, it was a pretty fun day off. I got a little laundry done and Mommy B got a little schoolwork done, and we pushed our home buying process a little further down the path. The kids got to stay home (not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing to them) and play in weather that doesn’t happen very often around here. We tried to move away from it, but not quite far enough apparently. But hey, I can live with only seeing snow once every four years.