A World of White!

Published in March, 2010  

By Asia S. Hinton

It’s a typical Thursday night around eight o’clock and 22-year-old Baltimore County resident Deonte Sweets is watching CSI Miami in his apartment complex, when suddenly his show was interrupted by a warning signal that flashed across the screen with the words “Winter Warning Watch”. Sweets disregarded the emergency notice and after five minutes of missing his favorite show, continued watching television.

It’s now about ten o’clock at night and Sweets notices that the snow is beginning to stick to the ground, but still he’s not too worried about the snow and prepares himself for bed.

“I heard the news calling for all this snow,” Sweets said. “But I didn’t pay much attention to it because the majority of the time their numbers are normally wrong.”

Little did Sweets know that he would be in for a huge surprise. When he woke up the next morning and took a glance outside of his window, Sweets noticed that his entire neighborhood was covered with white fluff.

A snow filled neighborhood

 From the top of the block to the end of the parking lot snow filled the roadways, curbs and grasslands. Trees were no longer standing tall; many branches were bent and broken from the heavy accumulation. Not a bird or crow was in sight. No footprints or tire tracks made their patterns in the snow. Street signs were covered and lamp posts looked as if they were frozen. Houses and apartment building roofs were covered with glossy snow and pointy icicles hung from the roof gutters. The neighborhood looked like a desert but, instead of blazing sun beams and dry land, the neighborhood had chilling cold winds and frigid grounds.

Superbowl plans cancelled

Looking at the massive snowfall already on the ground and the snow that was still falling from the sky, Sweets knew that his plans for Sunday’s Superbowl were ruined.

“It kind of sucks because I was going to have a small gathering for everyone to watch the Superbowl at my house, but from looking at the amount of snow on the ground I knew it was impossible,” Sweets said. “Plow trucks could barely get through, so I knew that the possibility of regular cars getting through was out of the question.”

While Sweets dreams of having a Superbowl party became impossible, it was even more impossible for neighbors to walk outside of their apartment buildings.

Another neighbor’s struggle

When 5’3 Wilgina Hill walked outside her apartment she was nearly buried by the snow. She had hoped to scoop away the snow from her 1996 green Honda Accord, but she could barely make it to the end of the sidewalk, without huge amounts of snow almost covering her knee caps. The snow began melting into her jeans and through her brown snow boats making it nearly impossible to free her car from its “white bandit.”

“It was like a dream when I stepped outside. Like something you see only on the movies,” Hill said. “It was about four p.m. and the neighborhood was still completely quiet. All you could hear was the wind blowing the snow in every direction. I decided to go back in my house and wait this storm out before trying to shovel out my car again.”

While everyone’s weekend plans may have been cancelled and with countless stores closed because of the weather, many people were forced to enjoy the comforts of their own home.

Cabin fever

Sixteen-year-old Simone Miller loved watching the snow fall because of its vast beauty and the way it makes the trees resemble tall icicles, but after a day and a half of being stuck at home it all became a little overwhelming.

“I kind of like the snow because we never have school, but since it’s the weekend, I kind of wish it would have waited till Monday or something,” Miller said. “It’s nothing to do here. I am tired of watching TV and logging on facebook. I really wish this would end soon and come back like Monday. That would be sweet.”

The weekend storm may have surprised many, but little did people know that they were in store for much more. Tuesday morning, afternoon and night, the snow made its presence known once again, making it a record breaker. Many people were stranded in the house for almost a week.

Work calls

Even though the snow may have stopped the city and its residents, it did not slow down Metro Supervisor Larry Strickland, who was forced to go in to work days earlier. Strickland, who works at the Mass Transit Administration (MTA), was forced to drive in dangerous conditions in order to get the buses, lightrails, and subways, safely off the roads.

“It doesn’t really shock me that I have to go to work, after all I am the supervisor,” Strickland said. “I just hope my truck will be able to make it through all of this snow.”

Trying to recover

Two weeks after the storms, residents are still struggling to recover. Countless parking lots are still covered in layers of snow that has turned into ice. It’s hard for many residents to find decent parking spaces. Many roadways that have double or triple lanes are now single lanes because of all the snow piled near the sidewalks. It seems that the old tale of the groundhog seeing its shadow just might make for six more weeks of winter.