Hurricanes, Ice Storms, and Last Minute Milk Runs

This picture (scouted from the Louisiana State Police Facebook Page) got sent around a lot because snow is Louisiana is a rare commodity.

But one photo from Shreveport, LA never tells the whole story, does it? Especially when shared on social media. Sent around on social media, everyone assumes Louisiana is encrusted in snow and ice.

Here's a weather update...

While the rest of the country got piles of snow as February drifted out of sight, Southwest Louisiana has gotten only rain.

And there's more rain projected this week.

Sneaux?

We wish!

And I admit that, while watching...from afar...the rest of the country's white wintery wonderlands blanketing my social media venues, I've had those moments of wanting that snowy fun, that sugar white bliss, that cold fuzzy, and those thousand worded pictures in my own backyard.

I've nodded with sympathetic naivety at cumbersome sharings which I clearly know nothing about. I've been keyed into their conversations, these friends from afar, about chiseling ice off vehicle windows, digging out vehicles and driveways with their snow blowers, and making last minute grocery store runs to get that final gallon of milk before the blizzard hits. Yet none of it seemed to replace the images of homemade igloos and the snow sled videos.

Our northern neighbors get to experience such fun and wonder in their comfortable houses and prepare to be blanketed inside for days using that gallon of milk to create warm hot cocoa. It's not quite a treacherous as Ma Ingalls' trip to the barn while holding the clothesline and arriving back in the house on Plum Creek with a bucketful of iced milk.

These conversations, and most definitely the instant digital imagery, left me thinking about how my last minute milk runs are always before a hurricane...or Christmas dinner.

Louisianians are very familiar with empty store shelves and last bottles of milk being snatched out from under us.

But there's a difference, I'm wont to add.

A last minute grocery store run here in Louisiana can equate into a mandatory evacuation which calls for leaving our homes and worrying about that gallon of milk going bad before we get to a relative's house or hotel far away from the threat of an impending storm.

It means the possibility, as we saw with Katrina and Rita in 2005, of being homeless for weeks on end.

For a brief flurry, one might be compelled to feel icy pricks of envy towards our northern neighbors blanketed in front of warm fireplaces, sipping hot cocoa under warm quilts while shrouded from outside commitments.

Or so we imagine.

As I mentioned, I am a Louisiana native...beyond naïve about northern things. When making trips as a child to northern states, it was strictly a vacation thing. Someone else did the work, I enjoyed the snow.

Forever living in Louisiana, I guess I never grew up and learned the hard lessons about living with snow.

Until this winter...

This is when one realizes that no matter how old you get, social media only shows you what you want to see. You have to dig deeper to see what lurks behind the beauty of the snowflakes.

When New Englander Melanie Bettinelli mentioned she suspected their ceiling might be leaking, I thought, "Well, being buried in snow isn't a good time for that to happen." And the thought that it was melting snow causing the leak did cross my mind. But we fix leaky roofs here in Louisiana all the time.

Not a huge threat, right?

Wrong!

I had no idea...because I just didn't know any better.

It was when she mentioned that they were told to scrape their roofs before the next snow storm or the heavy weight of snow and ice could cause the roof to collapse that I realized blizzards are as dangerous to their homes as hurricanes are to ours.

And while I thought how lucky there were to not have the threat of leaving their homes due to the elements, I never dreamed that what looks like an ice castle to us can, in fact, crash like shards of glass over their heads. Literally. The thought was horrific to me...one so far away from the threat.

I know water. I don't know ice.

So I have to apologize to our northern neighbors that I clearly had no idea that---other than skidding on roadways, freezing on the streets, and sword piercing icicles falling from rooftops as one exits---there were risks to staying home when a storm threatens.

I'll go back to prepping my pirogue for the spring rains and know full-heartedly that ice castles can clearly shatter the hearts entrusted to them.

Queen Elsa reminds us of that.