It made me think of the winter of 1976-77 in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. We had 17 straight days in which the temperature never got above zero. Usually, it'd drop about 7 degrees below zero, then get up near zero in the day. We had one night with eight inches of snow and the wind chill supposedly hit minus-24. I don't know if it was that cold, but it was bitter cold that night.
Apparently not too many people tested Highway 220 that night, as I drove home from working at The Homestead. Snow packed the road and drifted on the sides, and it was hard to tell where my side of the road was. So I drove up the middle, hoping I didn't meet too much traffic. By the time I'd driven two miles or so to our home in Ashwood, I still hadn't met anyone, and my tire tracks were the only ones out there.
The next year, I was attending Radford College, and we had cold, wind and snow. I couldn't find out if classes were on, so I headed out. The wind blew me to my knees and sent my books sailing down the street. There were outdoor steps, and, naturally, I fell down them, bump, de-bump, de-bump. There were 10 steps; my butt hit seven of them, and the rest were beneath me.
And, yes, when I got to the classroom, class was cancelled.
It was frozen up and blown away.
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