Weather Stories

[Joe-n-Doe]

The ice storms many of you have or are experiencing this year have reminded me of 3 weather related experiences.

When I was in the 2nd grade my Dad was stationed in Germany at Dolan Barracks in Bavaria. We had what seemed to me to an immense amount of snow that year. In fact, I don’t remember every seeing at deep since. The thing I remember most is how the wind and moisture created a hard cap over the surface of the snow. I can remember my brothers and friends having a blast actually running on top of the crusty snow and laughing our collective butts off when it caved in and we fell through the 3 or 4 feet of snow to the ground. We were so young and small it seemed like 10 feet of snow.

In January of 1968, I was undergoing some training at Ft. Gordon, GA. One Friday night we had an ice storm. This is the first ice storm I can remember being in. We were being marched to our barracks by a young, green 2LT. Everything was icy and we were having difficulty avoiding slipping. One of the SGTs suggested he put us into route step, a suggestion the young LT rejected. Within minutes he marched us through a ditch, the whole company slipped and fell on their butts and on top of one another. At first it was real funny, but then it became a PITA to crawl out of the ditch. To get the traction needed to get out of the ditch, everyone began crawling over the guy next to or under them. We laughed about it all the way back to the barracks. The next morning after breakfast (Saturday) our acting platoon SGT, one of us and a real A….., marched us over to the main PX parking lot. The pavement and parking lot was covered with a think sheet of ice. Of course we were all slipping and falling, much of it self induced and greatly animated. Once at the parking lot, this clown has police the are lot for trash and cigarette butts. Problem was it was all frozen to the ground and incased under that hard sheet of ice. It took a passing officer to tell this joker to suspend the detail before we were dismissed.

Twenty years later, I found myself working in Washington D.C. and living in Northern Virginia. 18 out of those 20 years I had lived in California and only experienced cold, freezing weather when I went to it. One afternoon we had an ice storm, the 2nd one I remember experiencing. Because I had taken the Metro to work, I didn’t think much of it. I had to work late that night and didn’t get to my parked car until about 9 P.M. The parking lot was like an ice rink and pretty empty. Worse than that was my Toyota van was incased in ice. Reminded me of a brown derby ice cream treat. All the key holes were frozen shut. I no longer smoked so was without a lighter or book of matches to melt the ice. This was pre cell phone days, I didn’t have any change, Metro wouldn’t give me any, and I had no way to call home. In my leather soled shoes, I skated back to my van and discovered the lock to the back tailgate was not frozen. I was able to open the back tailgate and was showered with ice. I was able to open it and then crawl over 2 rows of seats to reach the driver seat. Fortunately the van started and within minutes the defroster began putting out warm air. Because I was new to the area, I hadn’t bought an ice scraper. I did however have a credit card. Problem was the side doors were frozen shut and I was concerned that too much force with damage the paint or operating mechanism. The only thing I do is crawl back over the 2 rows of seats to get back out. You know to use my credit card to scrape the ice from the windows. I made sure all the doors were unlocked and made my move. It didn’t take long before the credit card broke into pieces. The only thing I could do was open the tailgate and crawl back inside. After about 30 minutes the front windshield was clear enough for me to drive the 12 miles home. Got home and the van couldn’t make it up the driveway. The drive home did nothing to loosen up the ice that encased the van, so I had to crawl out the back one last time. For days afterward while driving I-66 and local roads, sheets of ice would break loose from vehicles and fly into following traffic. Pretty unnerving!