Valentine’s Day we may forget. But major Triangle snows? We’ll always remember those.
Go back a few days and walk three minutes from our doorstep to the nearby Publix.
Saunter through the automated glass doors that beckon for all and their credit cards. And then try — just try — parting through the sea of red.
Hundreds of red, heart-shaped balloons bopping and swaying. Guilting you from above the flower display. Hanging out at the salad bar. Milking your attention in the cereal aisle.
Valentine’s Day was Wednesday, on the 14th of February, as it is every year.
It seems we need a squadron of red-balloon reminders because it’s easier to ignore loved ones than forget a good snowfall in the Triangle.
Ask friends and family what they’re gifting for Valentine’s Day, and they mumble with the enthusiasm of someone just sentenced to house arrest and double-secret probation.
But talk about snow in the Triangle, and we go completely Bing Crosby giddy, ticking off dates from 10, 19, even 24 years ago.
There’s:
January 23-25, 2000 – What The N&O called the “once-in-forever” snow. Here is Brooke Cain’s recount on the storm’s 20th anniversary: “A little snow came on Sunday, Jan. 23, 2000, but a drizzly Sunday evening lulled us into a sense of complacency. A false alarm? But then on Monday, it snowed again. And it kept snowing. And snowing. And snowing.” By Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2000, the Triangle had a record 20+ inches of snow. Talk about an overachieving storm that local meteorologists initially pegged as 1-3 inches of the fluffy stuff.
January 19, 2005 – Ah, yes, the “lousy, no-one-got-home” storm. Here is former N&O journalist Bruce Siceloff’s description of what happened: “Raleigh workers left their offices that day about the same time as Wake County schools started closing down. But the roads were so icy that many bus drivers had to turn back, and 3,000 students spent the night in their school buildings.”
February 11-14, 2014 – Not as treacherous as 2005, but how many snowfalls become a viral meme with the hashtag #Snowpocalypse, The snow started Feb. 11 and carried through Valentine’s Day. The N&O’s Josh Shaffer described it as “a storm too wet for sledding, too messy for snowmen, too slippery to drive.” The snow was so cataclysmic that the UNC-Duke game was postponed. Thad Ogburn, then The N&O’s metro editor, remembers driving with a job candidate and having to head back to the office because of the quickly accumulating snow: “I distinctly remember the job candidate having to help me keep the windshield clear for the long ride back.” (For those wondering, the candidate got a job offer a couple of weeks later — on a sunny day.)
We do care about Valentine’s Day when it snows.
Go to the newsobserver.com sites and search for Visual Editor Scott Sharpe’s photo gallery with the headline “Photos: In 2014, a Valentine’s Day snowpocalypse paralyzed the Triangle.” Visual journalist Robert Willett recalls capturing images of residents snowboarding and cross country skiing in Raleigh and “people who have no idea how to navigate their vehicles in the snow.”
Is the absence-makes-the-heart-go-find-a-wool-sweater an explainer for the Triangle’s snow forlornness? This is The N&O’s Martha Quillin musing in a recent N&O story on two years without measurable snow:
“We love snow, the whole idea of snow as we understand it: a tantalizing dusting, a painterly inch or, on the rarest of occasions, enough to build a snowman or stir into a bowl with sugar and drops of vanilla extract.
“And we miss it.”
I admire Martha, but let me pop that heart-shaped balloon.
The last three major ones resulted in the smartest weather people we know missing the snowfall forecast by a ruler and a half, students stuck at school and ESPN’s Dick Vitale struggling to find a ride to the Dean Dome. (I mean, who leaves Dickie V stranded?)
No.
We shouldn’t miss snow.
Bill Church is executive editor of The News & Observer.
