We woke up Friday morning to this view out the bedroom window.
We were surprised because the Atlanta TV weathermen, who we rely on for some of our forecasts, were not tearing their hair out and running around in circles Thursday night. If there is a reasonable probability of an accumulation of snow, the Atlanta TV stations typically treat it like an invasion from Mars. Since they didn’t, we didn’t expect snow.
But we got it. It snowed all day Friday. By the time it stopped early Saturday morning, around eight inches had fallen, although not all actually accumulated on the ground.
The company I used to work for, and still do a little work for, had their Christmas party Friday night. We had planned to attend, but I was worried about two things: Lookout Mountain and Sand Mountain. The highway to Huntsville, Al, crosses both mountains, and those mountains have steep grades. At least a couple of times when I was still working in Huntsville, snow on those grades forced me to detour through Chattanooga, for a trip that lasted about eight hours instead of the normal two and a half hours. The last thing I wanted was for Leah and me to end up trapped on one of those mountains with no way off.
I took the truck down our mountain to see what conditions would be like. I made a video of the drive back up.
It wasn’t bad, but I didn’t know what to expect over in Alabama. As the day passed, the Atlanta TV stations, which broadcasted nothing but snow news all day (making up for the lack of franticness the day before), showed an expected accumulation of almost nothing to our west, where we would have to go. So we chanced it, and everything was fine.
Saturday was a day for appreciating the snow.
“I want to go outside and build a snowman!”
I took Sam and Zeke on their usual walk Saturday morning. Sam was pretty enthusiastic about the snow. I made a video of him sniffing under and around the snow. Unfortunately, I had to hold the phone vertically, so the video is not properly oriented.
Any appreciable snow accumulation is rare for Rome in December. Eight inches is very unusual. In fact, this type of snow is very rare any time in Georgia. Accumulations in the Atlanta area were even greater in some places. Damage caused by the heavy snow resulted in more than 100,000 electrical outages in the Atlanta area. Fortunately, we had no problems up on the mountain. All we had was some additional beauty plus some cold weather.
What a beautiful surprise that snow was. Somehow snow makes everything softer and turns landscapes into hushed scenes of art. We had a good laugh about the Atlanta weather forecasters and mars invasion. Love the videos.
Thanks for the video of your drive along the mountain road and up to your welcoming house. That’s the best kind of snow i.e. someone else’s.
Robin — It was a real surprise since the TV weathermen didn’t really think it was going to happen. One of them apologized for missing the forecast a few days after the snow, which apparently wreaked havoc in the Atlanta area.
Minnie — Our snowfalls are usually a very short-term event. Even after a lot of snow, the streets are usually clear a day or so later. Occasionally we get snow that lasts for too long. A few years ago we were snowbound so long I actually tried to get out on the icy roads to drive to work. You know the snow has been on the ground too long when I do that.