I Had Never Seen Snow
By Christina, age 18, Louisiana
Sweet Designs Featured Writer
I've never seen snow. Literally, except for television, the closest I have ever been to snow is seeing flurries on Christmas, 2004. Temperatures in Louisiana, especially the southern part, normally range anywhere from freezing to eighty degrees. Even as I type this, it's 75 degrees on the 20th of December. So it was no surprise to see "a wintry mix" on the forecast. To actually get it? That surprised me too well.
Eight to twelve inches of snow and four days without electricity hit us hard on December 11, 2008, and, as I've heard multiple times in the past few weeks, that much of anything outside of rain and wind hasn't hit Louisiana since the late sixties. Now, this year, after two hurricanes (one forcing me to evacuate to Georgia for nearly a week and the other shutting down school for a day), my snow story goes something like this:
5:30 AM. I'm in bed. My girlfriend stayed over, and we're both waiting for the alarm to ring, so we can crawl out of said bed and begin getting ready. It's a Thursday and we were in the middle of being excited for Friday and relieved that, for the first half of that day, we'd both be helping the drama department get ready for a performance in the gym. Missing half of our classes sounded nice and relaxing. Next week was to be our midterms. After that, two weeks break.
At 5:45 AM, before the alarm actually rang, my mother was in my room exclaiming that what was outside was - you got it - snow. She's originally from Chicago, and having been away from it for so long, flurries (which was all we were getting at the time) were a pleasant surprise. I stood out there in pajama pants and a t-shirt for about ten minutes before the snow actually began to stick.
I've never seen snow stick.
Twenty minutes and a light coat had formed.
Forty minutes and I was eventually forced to put on real clothing.
An hour and, well, that's when it really started getting heavy.
Despite the apparent dangers, and I say "dangers" with regard to my new camera, I took my Nikon everywhere that day. By nine o'clock it was practically soaked, but luckily working. When it became really heavy my girlfriend and I walked back behind my house to her house (convenient, eh?) and spent the remainder of the day there. Let me tell you, I've never seen anything more beautiful than her and her puppy playing in eight inches of white-ice-rain.
I had jumped around like a little kid all morning and snapped pictures until the memory card couldn't hold any more, and I had to run home, download them, and then come back. It had gotten cold and then the lights went out. For the first night my girlfriend stayed again. The second night was a little rougher, seeing as my phone was dying, I was alone in my room, and not to mention it was cold. Freezing. Well, 30-ish. I've never slept with more clothes on in my life.
From Thursday to Sunday it was snowy and cold and eh. All of the actual snow didn't melt away until Saturday, leaving it on the ground for three days, and phone service was too mixed up to really be of any use until the late weekend. Despite all of this, I'd give anything (not anyone - only anything) to again see that much 'wintry mix' in this place at any time.
I had never seen snow, and now that I have, I love it.
