Here in the South, we know that Groundhog Day is useless. Regardless of whether a rodent sees his shadow, springtime comes in fits and starts down here.
We can enjoy gorgeous, warm weather in February and early March followed by a hard freeze. In Georgia, where I live, we’ve had freezes in April! So we shouldn’t have been surprised when winter weather hit the South on Saturday, March 13, 1993 — 30 years ago today.
In metro Atlanta, we had gotten used to the warm weather that served as a teaser for springtime. On Wednesday, March 10, the high reached 75º.
Local meteorologists tried to warn us that the warm weather wasn’t going to last and that cold and snow were on their way.
“WSB Chief Meteorologist Glenn Burns, his TV team and 750 AM WSB Radio meteorologist Kirk Mellish had been duly warning the metro Atlanta and north Georgia areas that we were in for a serious snowstorm,” reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an article from last year remembering the Blizzard of ’93.
In 2018, Burns, who recently retired, recalled the forecasting and how the storm worried him.
Another meteorologist, Fox 5’s David Chandley, has a more unusual remembrance of the storm. He was at WSB at the time, and as an ABC affiliate, the station sent him to Los Angeles that weekend to interview stars of the network’s sitcoms. Chandley and his pregnant wife visited his parents in Colorado, then headed to California, so he missed the blizzard.
Remember back in 1993, there no laptops, ipads and smartphones, so I didn’t know the massive storm was brewing until I turned on the L.A. news and then WOW. We didn’t return home until Tuesday March 16th and by then most of the snow had melted. Our neighbors did take a picture of our snow covered house. There is a part of me that wishes I was here during the storm, but there have been plenty of Snow and Ice Jams since to more than make up for it. Plus, we have incredible family memories from our trip out west.
So the Blizzard of 93 will always bring a smile to my face..sorry about that.
When it hit, the blizzard hit hard. Snowfall went beyond what Southerners generally expect; from Atlanta eastward to Athens, most areas received 3-9 inches of snow, while suburbs north of the city saw 10-15 inches, and the North Georgia mountains had totals up to 30 inches.
On Saturday, North Georgia dealt with 40 mph wind gusts that brought the wind chill down to -30º. Trees fell all over metro Atlanta, and thousands of people went without power in bitter cold for days.
That’s what happened to my family. I was a student at the University of Georgia, and when the blizzard hit my parents’ house, we were snowed in without power for three days. At the time, we had a well, so no power also meant no water.
My mom reminded me how our family would melt snow on the wood heater to be able to flush the toilet, and I can remember how good it felt when some friends who lived close by got their power back — their service was with a different power company — and we could get a hot shower.
Another memory I have from those four days was that we had a battery-powered black-and-white TV with a seven-inch screen, and we would choose one show to watch as a family every night. We didn’t dare watch more than one program because we didn’t want the batteries to die.
Flashback: Remembering Snow Jam: the Storm That Paralyzed Atlanta 40 Years Ago This Week
Other people have similar stories. Mandi Albright, in the AJC piece from last year, wrote, “I got a taste — literally — of pre-electricity days here in the South. I roasted potatoes in the fireplace ashes (they were delicious), piled on the quilts to keep warm and carefully got the old kerosene lamp going. It wasn’t what I was used to, but there was a coziness to it that I’ve never quite felt since.”
One friend of mine said that his son was born on March 11 that year, and on March 12, the hospital offered to let his wife and son stay in the hospital one more night, but they refused and went home. They were glad they went on home rather than being stranded at the hospital in a blizzard.
Another friend remembers finding out before leaving work that the road he lived on was closed, so he took another way home, only to find that his mother, who lived close by, was stuck in the snow. He went back and retrieved her from her snowbound car to take her home. Yet another friend said she was grateful for the break from school but wished she could’ve been snowed in with her friends instead of her parents!
We Southerners are infinitely grateful that a snow and cold weather event like the Blizzard of ’93 comes so rarely. I do realize that some of you Northerners are laughing or shaking your head at our once-in-a-blue-moon plight, and all I can say to that is, “Cut us some slack!” 😂
Here’s some news footage from multiple outlets from that fateful weekend:
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