From January 6-8, 1996, a massive snowstorm, one of the biggest of the century, covered the Northeast. We were living in New Jersey. As a Miami girl, I was barely used to cold and snowy winters. I had never been through a blizzard like that and didn’t know what to expect.
My husband and I were living in an apartment, which had only two ways out: the front door that opened onto a breezeway, and the sliding glass door that opened onto the patio. When we woke up the morning after the blizzard, we opened the front door. I was shocked to find a wall of snow as high as the doorway. No getting out that way.
The sliding glass door fared a little better, with snow piled halfway up. It was possible to open the door, but we would have had to climb up the snow bank to get out.
Our snow shovel was in our car that was buried on the other side of the building in the common parking lot. So, we did the next best thing: we grabbed pots from the kitchen and started scooping. After a while, we had somewhat cleared the patio and created quite a snow hill next to it.
Eventually, we did the same with the snow wall at the front door. We had nowhere to toss the snow, so we dumped it into the bathtub and ran hot water to melt it.
Our cats were very interested in what was going on. Chingis was our older and bigger cat. Crickett was our younger and smaller cat. You’d think Chingis would have been the tough one, but he was really an overgrown baby. Crickett was our fearless explorer.
After we got the patio somewhat cleared, we let the cats out to look around. Chingis took a few hesitant steps, shook the wet cold off his paws, and ran back inside. Crickett explored every inch of the snow-covered patio and seemed fascinated with how the world had transformed overnight.
Much to our surprise, she jumped up the snow cliff and started trudging off toward the trees. Her feet sank into the snow, but that didn’t stop her. She wanted to explore this new frozen world.
We let her have some fun, and then brought her back inside before she got too chilled. She stayed at the glass door, so interested in looking at the snow.
Eventually, we got out front to dig out our car. A huge snow drift reached almost to the top of the stop sign. It took a while to scoop the snow away from the car, so we could open the door and get our snow shovel. I made a mental note to keep a shovel in the apartment.
Many of our fellow residents were outside digging out their cars too. The blizzard hit over the weekend. We must have been out of work that Monday. But I’m sure things were back up and running soon after. New Jersey was pretty good about clearing highways and keeping trains and buses running.
We had plenty of snow to contend with in our years of living up north. Thankfully, we didn’t have another blizzard like that.
A few years later, we moved to a bigger apartment on the second floor. I can’t imagine how much harder that would have been to get out after a blizzard with a balcony and stairs. Glad we were on the ground floor when the blizzard of 1996 came along.
Exploring Generations 