IT HAS BEEN WORST.

While this ice imprisonment has indeed been brutal and disruptive of scheduling and acting and planning of all manner of things, it is by far not the worst we have seen.

I am old enough to have seen several brutal winter storms right here in central Virginia……far worse in results than this one has been so far……so far because the weather terrorist are calling for another blast this weekend on top of what we have currently encrusting our realm in its icy grip.

Lets join Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman in the way back machine and look at a few.

In a different century I was a middle school student and recall a snow storm that forced school shutdown for over two weeks….that one was mostly volume of snow.   That storm too featured colder than normal temperatures.  I do not recall the measurement, but recall trudging through snow that was nearly chest deep…..there was no driving……back then (early sixties) there was not an armada of equipment to move snow or clear roads…..A lot of clearing was done in a normal winter by farmers with a loader or a rear mounted blade.  Tractors did not have heated cabs back then.  This was suitable for a typical central Virginia winter…….but for the first snowmagedon of my memory, this equipment was ineffective.  I recall that the place where I had my horse had snow drifted against the barn from the roof to the ground.  The drifted snow had a crust of ice that blocked access to the shed that housed the little international tractor.  We had to wait several days to call in a larger tractor with a bucket and backhoe to try  to open the driveway to the farm…..about half way thru that clearing job the operator was offered a much more profitable clearing job and left me with a shovel to complete the work….took several days……

Moving forward to 1969…..I was a freshman at VPI&SU…..yes that is what it was called back then…..during the winter quarter I managed to break my ankle and hopped around a snow covered campus on crutches for most of the winter….Just a typical Blacksburg winter but one that remains in my winter story memory.

Financing my  education interfered several times with the continuation of my education and I had to suspend my studies several times to earn money to continue…..I managed to cram a four year course of instruction into eight short years…..and finally graduated in 1975.  Part of this time was spent working for Uncle Sam which qualified me for some GI Bill assistance. 

Upon graduation I was offered a herdsman position at a farm in Northeast Ohio.  That is where I learned that I could never qualify as a yankee…..The winter of 1977-78….was brutal….That year a good portion of the Chesapeake bay froze for a while….The winter nearly ended the career of yours truly…..unrelenting snowbelt snow and brutal cold in Northeast Ohio…..I recall one day of driving snow with 40 mph winds and actual temperature of 22 below, and I was out in it all day trying to keep cattle fed and alive….I promised the good lord that if I survived the day he would not have to worry about me being another winter in Ohio…..Took me six months to find another Job in Virginia

Landed at Walnut Hill farm in Rockville as the cattle Manager.  Apparently I had adapted to the northern weather….the first year back I never wore a coat all winter.  I was there for several years….I don’t remember the year exactly but we had a snowstorm.  We were expanding the herd and I had about a hundred heifers bred to start calving the first of March…..March in normally a good time to start calving so naturally that is when the snow storm hit…..deep snow came down hard and fast…..I recall that my farm truck was a six cylinder ford with positive traction and four in the floor…..I put chains on the rear and I could go about anywhere…..would love to have a truck that solid today….I recall putting it in low gear and starting off across the fields in two feet of snow while I climbed on the back and spread baled hay for the cows

But I lost a lot of calves in that storm……many of which I did not know were born until I found the carcasses when the thaw came…..the inexperienced mamas had the calves and the snow covered them and they perished….

When I worked for Dairymen Inc. in the late eighties and early nineties we had a couple of heavy snow storms…..we were marketing milk for about 500 dairy farms and milk must be hauled to the processors every two days…..We had a pretty good group of milk haulers and we took pride in not losing much milk because of weather delays…..living in the office and assisting with the hauling for a week at a time was not uncommon….we never had any big wrecks but keeping roads open to 500 farms and trucks  on the road and not in the ditch was challenging. 

The last bad storm I recall was in the late nineties….I was working for Diversey as a factory rep and covering parts of seven states…..drove about eighty thousand miles a year not counting the miles I rode with my customers.  I was working in Maryland one morning and came outside to snow and ice….I was hoping to work my way back home that day.  My last stop of the day was in Culpepper and I finished about 5:30 that evening and headed home….Had been fighting weather while driving all day but up the last 40 miles ere it was snow…..as I headed east the weather was freezing rain….the farther east the worse the weather…..the last 40 miles was battling trees in the road…..there were no lights visible anywhere except a few cars coming at me.  Drove under over and around all sorts of obstacles…..got stuck in my driveway and walked the rest of the way to the house…..we were out of power for over two weeks and I spent the next couple of days cutting trees off of the power line to my house…..my neighbor wandered what would happen if the power came on while I was cutting trees off the line…..I told him not to worry because there was not power between here and Culpepper……