Miss the first part of this series? See it here: Boxing Day Blizzard Part I: It begins with an early-morning accident
Part II begins here: I did not make it home through the storm
The first 3 hours of my news producing shift are always the busiest for me.
Sunday I was late because of my car accident, and so it was around 7ish when I fired up my computer and hit the ground running because I was an hour behind.
I rushed to review stories that ran in the newspaper and prepare them for presentation online. I checked the news wires to post new updates to APP all while organizing stories and shuffling things around to transform the home page to get me through the morning web traffic rush. Lastly, I checked my email and spent a few minutes dealing with any web requests that the editors had doled out.
I knew that we were getting some snow, and so I gave the weather story that the reporter had typed up a quick read through, grabbed a local forecast map from Accuweather and posted it to to the site, giving it a high priority because storm stories always pay off in page views.
"Looks like we're going to get like 10 inches!" the reporter said as I'm posting his story.
Sundays are a little different than normal days in the newsroom, and it's quiet in there.
Half the lights remain shut off for a big part of the morning and it's missing some of its weekday hustle-bustle.
A scant staff consisting of a news clerk, the early-morning reporter, a paginator and myself are the only souls upstairs until about 11ish when a few others trickle in, and then later, the night desk editors come in to get the newspaper all proofed, edited and sent out to be printed.
I ran through all the motions of my normal a.m. routine.
When I first spotted flurries outside the windows late in the morning I said aloud, "It's starting to snow!" to the near-empty newsroom.
The nearby reporter told me he'd written a new topper for the weather story that I'd posted earlier. The new material said that the snow had started coming down and also the reporter had gotten a comment from a guy over at the weather center in Mt. Holly. I updated the story.
The snow continued to fall and quickly blanketed the ground in white. It was mid-afternoon. My shift ended at 2 p.m. and I got more and more nervous about my 15-mile drive home as I watched the snowfall build up outside.
The ever-changing weather forecasts kept getting grimmer and grimmer, with the forecasted inch totals rising every half hour and blizzard alerts warning of white-out conditions on roadways and roaring winds.
I received an email from a VIP (very important person) saying that the weather was going to be dangerous and that hotel rooms would be made available for Press employees who were unable to get home.
I went to look outside, and the roads outside the newsroom on Route 66 were freshly blanketed, with a few tire tracks marring them.
I estimated about 5 inches? But the winds were strong and the snow was coming down hard and fast.
I was thinking about my morning commute, and here's where I started to worry.
I get on the roads at like 5-something a.m. and usually in snowstorms, the roads aren't plowed that early.
Staying home on a snow day isn't really an option for me, because storm days are when I'm needed most in the newsroom because of all the traffic, crashes and other weather-related havoc that needs to be posted to APP.com.
It's nearing 1:30 ish and I call my dad to ask for advice. I told him that I wanted to go home to pick up clothes and stuff for work tomorrow, but that staying at the hotel near the newsroom was an option. "Do you think I'd make it home right now in my car?" I asked him.
"Your car has a very low undercarriage," he explained to me slowly. "All you need is 4 inches of snow underneath that thing, and you're stuck. You get stuck on the highway in a blizzard, and who knows when you'll get help."
I thought about this.
"Do you have a snow-brush in your car?" he asked me.
Damn, I thought. I'd left it propped up against the garage when I was loading xmas presents into my car. The trunk was so small that I needed the room.
"Or a shovel to dig yourself out in case your car gets stuck," he continued, "Or warm clothes? Gloves?"
"I don't have any of that stuff," I admitted. "But I knew it was going to snow so I'm wearing my Uggs."
"Don't try to come home," he said, "I'm telling you, stay there if you can. I wouldn't be driving in this."
His statement was significant because he's a truck driver and according to him, the best damned driver on the East Coast with more miles under his belt than I have thoughts in my head.
I usually trust his judgement when assessing road conditions. He's the guy who taught me to look at the tops of power lines for light reflections indicating approaching vehicles when I had my bright lights on. He takes driving very seriously.
I decided to reserve a room at the hotel and stay there overnight.
But despite my dad's warnings, I also decided to drive home first to pick up some clothes, a bottle of wine.
At this point, reports of car crashes, airport delays and train station chaos come pouring in and I have my hands full updating the site, trying to keep all the weather, traffic, news reports updated and re-caching the home page every minute.
The night editor asks me if I'd like to stay, because the producer who is supposed to take over for me at 4 is bogged down with a writing assignment.
I never say no to overtime, and I figured I was staying at the hotel anyway, so I told him I could stay until 6 p.m. I was crazy busy managing the web site right up until 6:30 p.m. when I decided to leave.
I was surprised when I stepped out of the building and my boot sank down fully into the snow. This had to be about 8 inches, I thought.
But I am determined to make it home, I reminded myself. I caught a glimpse of some orange paint peeking out from a snow drift and headed toward my little clown car.
I struggled to lift up the hatchback that was buried under snow and dug around in my trunk until I found a flip flop and some gloves. I put on the $2 gloves and started the messy business of clearing off the snow from my car with a rubber flip flop.
The snow was coming down hard and strong winds were sending stinging gusts of cold down my neck and into my ears. Snow worked its way into my cuffs and melted around my wrists.
I kicked out the snow from under my tires and pulled off as much snow as I could using the flip flop and my gloved hands. The inside floor of the car was caked with snow.
I put the car in gear, and made it maybe 30 feet before my car became firmly lodged in a snow drift in the parking lot. I put the car in gear, and heard slipping tires, then I reversed and the same thing. The car wasn't budging at all.
The problem was that the snow was so deep, and the winds so blinding that you couldn't even see where the pavement was supposed to be anymore. I had inadvertently planted my car into a snow drift.
A facilities guy was in a plow, clearing up the parking lot, but I noticed that the snow was coming down so fast that he was having trouble getting the plow to move the growing, heavy piles of snow.
Another staff member who was leaving the building noticed me trying to kick out the snow under my tires with my boot.
"I have a shovel," he said. "Do you need help?"
"Yes!" I told him. "Yes, I need help."
My unnamed hero began digging under my car, directing me to turn right, left, go backward, forward as the car remained motionless and helplessly stuck as my gas gage crept downward.
Snow was sand-blasting its way into the car, because my windows were open so I could hear him yelling out directions.
My low gas light blinked on, and I panicked, thinking, "I'm going to run out of gas and be stuck in the snow and freeze to death on the side of a highway."
The plow guy gets restless because my car's blocking his path and he gets out to help. "She's stuck," he said to the guy helping me. "That car's not going anywhere."
"Should I leave it here?" I asked. My voice sounded so tiny in the rushing winds and my face was starting to freeze so badly that when I talked, my mouth felt all numby and slow.
He walked away without answering and returned with a shovel.
After a long while of digging under the car, it started to move forward when I gunned the gas.
"Keep going," they yelled, dropping the shovels and pushing on my bumper, "Don't stop."
I wanted to be polite and thank them for helping me but I was scared to get stuck again so I gunned the engine and the car moved forward slowly as I screamed "thank you so much for helping me!"
I made it out of the parking lot, and got stuck again in the middle of the intersection at the first light outside the newsroom. The traffic light changed, and I was scared to get out of the car even though it was planted right in the pathway of oncoming traffic.
Forget about going home, I thought, I'd be lucky to make it to the hotel parking lot.
I looked around and suddenly felt a gentle bump from behind as my car started moving forward. I looked in my rearview mirror and my heart jolted when I saw the grill of an SUV filling up my entire view.
I turned around to get a better look when I noticed the police lights on top. I looked to the driver and I saw that his window was rolled down and his hand was out with his thumb sticking up.
"Oh! He's pushing me to safety!" I said to myself and gunned the engine, wincing when I thought of how much gas I was using up.
I barely made it to the hotel parking lot.
I walked into that lobby feeling embarrassed of how I looked because I was a total mess. My glasses were all fogged up, I was drenched and covered with snow, snot was pouring from my nose and my whole face was numb and red from the sandblasting blizzard I'd just faced.
I checked in and called my dad to let him know that I was crazy to think I'd make it home and to tell him I was ok. Then I noticed that my phone was almost dead, and that the only charger I had was at home or at work.
In Part III: Without dry clothing, food I make a trip through the blizzard to Walgreens to get some supplies. I spend a night at the Marriott with some editors from the newspaper who have also been stranded.
****READ PART III: NJ declares a state of emergency and I spend a night at the Marriott.
 |
| Dec. 26: The blizzard starts. |
The first 3 hours of my news producing shift are always the busiest for me.
Sunday I was late because of my car accident, and so it was around 7ish when I fired up my computer and hit the ground running because I was an hour behind.
I rushed to review stories that ran in the newspaper and prepare them for presentation online. I checked the news wires to post new updates to APP all while organizing stories and shuffling things around to transform the home page to get me through the morning web traffic rush. Lastly, I checked my email and spent a few minutes dealing with any web requests that the editors had doled out.
I knew that we were getting some snow, and so I gave the weather story that the reporter had typed up a quick read through, grabbed a local forecast map from Accuweather and posted it to to the site, giving it a high priority because storm stories always pay off in page views.
"Looks like we're going to get like 10 inches!" the reporter said as I'm posting his story.
Sundays are a little different than normal days in the newsroom, and it's quiet in there.
Half the lights remain shut off for a big part of the morning and it's missing some of its weekday hustle-bustle.
 |
| A glimpse inside the newsroom. I'd take a pic with my iPhone but it's all water damaged and the camera is busted. Lame. |
I ran through all the motions of my normal a.m. routine.
When I first spotted flurries outside the windows late in the morning I said aloud, "It's starting to snow!" to the near-empty newsroom.
The nearby reporter told me he'd written a new topper for the weather story that I'd posted earlier. The new material said that the snow had started coming down and also the reporter had gotten a comment from a guy over at the weather center in Mt. Holly. I updated the story.
The snow continued to fall and quickly blanketed the ground in white. It was mid-afternoon. My shift ended at 2 p.m. and I got more and more nervous about my 15-mile drive home as I watched the snowfall build up outside.
The ever-changing weather forecasts kept getting grimmer and grimmer, with the forecasted inch totals rising every half hour and blizzard alerts warning of white-out conditions on roadways and roaring winds.
I received an email from a VIP (very important person) saying that the weather was going to be dangerous and that hotel rooms would be made available for Press employees who were unable to get home.
I went to look outside, and the roads outside the newsroom on Route 66 were freshly blanketed, with a few tire tracks marring them.
I estimated about 5 inches? But the winds were strong and the snow was coming down hard and fast.
 |
| I take this home page very seriously. |
I get on the roads at like 5-something a.m. and usually in snowstorms, the roads aren't plowed that early.
Staying home on a snow day isn't really an option for me, because storm days are when I'm needed most in the newsroom because of all the traffic, crashes and other weather-related havoc that needs to be posted to APP.com.
It's nearing 1:30 ish and I call my dad to ask for advice. I told him that I wanted to go home to pick up clothes and stuff for work tomorrow, but that staying at the hotel near the newsroom was an option. "Do you think I'd make it home right now in my car?" I asked him.
"Your car has a very low undercarriage," he explained to me slowly. "All you need is 4 inches of snow underneath that thing, and you're stuck. You get stuck on the highway in a blizzard, and who knows when you'll get help."
I thought about this.
"Do you have a snow-brush in your car?" he asked me.
Damn, I thought. I'd left it propped up against the garage when I was loading xmas presents into my car. The trunk was so small that I needed the room.
"Or a shovel to dig yourself out in case your car gets stuck," he continued, "Or warm clothes? Gloves?"
"I don't have any of that stuff," I admitted. "But I knew it was going to snow so I'm wearing my Uggs."
"Don't try to come home," he said, "I'm telling you, stay there if you can. I wouldn't be driving in this."
His statement was significant because he's a truck driver and according to him, the best damned driver on the East Coast with more miles under his belt than I have thoughts in my head.
I usually trust his judgement when assessing road conditions. He's the guy who taught me to look at the tops of power lines for light reflections indicating approaching vehicles when I had my bright lights on. He takes driving very seriously.
I decided to reserve a room at the hotel and stay there overnight.
But despite my dad's warnings, I also decided to drive home first to pick up some clothes, a bottle of wine.
At this point, reports of car crashes, airport delays and train station chaos come pouring in and I have my hands full updating the site, trying to keep all the weather, traffic, news reports updated and re-caching the home page every minute.
The night editor asks me if I'd like to stay, because the producer who is supposed to take over for me at 4 is bogged down with a writing assignment.
 |
| Thank goodness for my ice-scraping flip flop... |
I was surprised when I stepped out of the building and my boot sank down fully into the snow. This had to be about 8 inches, I thought.
But I am determined to make it home, I reminded myself. I caught a glimpse of some orange paint peeking out from a snow drift and headed toward my little clown car.
I struggled to lift up the hatchback that was buried under snow and dug around in my trunk until I found a flip flop and some gloves. I put on the $2 gloves and started the messy business of clearing off the snow from my car with a rubber flip flop.
The snow was coming down hard and strong winds were sending stinging gusts of cold down my neck and into my ears. Snow worked its way into my cuffs and melted around my wrists.
I kicked out the snow from under my tires and pulled off as much snow as I could using the flip flop and my gloved hands. The inside floor of the car was caked with snow.
I put the car in gear, and made it maybe 30 feet before my car became firmly lodged in a snow drift in the parking lot. I put the car in gear, and heard slipping tires, then I reversed and the same thing. The car wasn't budging at all.
The problem was that the snow was so deep, and the winds so blinding that you couldn't even see where the pavement was supposed to be anymore. I had inadvertently planted my car into a snow drift.
A facilities guy was in a plow, clearing up the parking lot, but I noticed that the snow was coming down so fast that he was having trouble getting the plow to move the growing, heavy piles of snow.
 |
| This is what I was up against... in a Mitsubishi Eclipse. |
"I have a shovel," he said. "Do you need help?"
"Yes!" I told him. "Yes, I need help."
My unnamed hero began digging under my car, directing me to turn right, left, go backward, forward as the car remained motionless and helplessly stuck as my gas gage crept downward.
Snow was sand-blasting its way into the car, because my windows were open so I could hear him yelling out directions.
My low gas light blinked on, and I panicked, thinking, "I'm going to run out of gas and be stuck in the snow and freeze to death on the side of a highway."
The plow guy gets restless because my car's blocking his path and he gets out to help. "She's stuck," he said to the guy helping me. "That car's not going anywhere."
"Should I leave it here?" I asked. My voice sounded so tiny in the rushing winds and my face was starting to freeze so badly that when I talked, my mouth felt all numby and slow.
He walked away without answering and returned with a shovel.
After a long while of digging under the car, it started to move forward when I gunned the gas.
"Keep going," they yelled, dropping the shovels and pushing on my bumper, "Don't stop."
I wanted to be polite and thank them for helping me but I was scared to get stuck again so I gunned the engine and the car moved forward slowly as I screamed "thank you so much for helping me!"
I made it out of the parking lot, and got stuck again in the middle of the intersection at the first light outside the newsroom. The traffic light changed, and I was scared to get out of the car even though it was planted right in the pathway of oncoming traffic.
Forget about going home, I thought, I'd be lucky to make it to the hotel parking lot.
I looked around and suddenly felt a gentle bump from behind as my car started moving forward. I looked in my rearview mirror and my heart jolted when I saw the grill of an SUV filling up my entire view.
I turned around to get a better look when I noticed the police lights on top. I looked to the driver and I saw that his window was rolled down and his hand was out with his thumb sticking up.
"Oh! He's pushing me to safety!" I said to myself and gunned the engine, wincing when I thought of how much gas I was using up.
I barely made it to the hotel parking lot.
I walked into that lobby feeling embarrassed of how I looked because I was a total mess. My glasses were all fogged up, I was drenched and covered with snow, snot was pouring from my nose and my whole face was numb and red from the sandblasting blizzard I'd just faced.
I checked in and called my dad to let him know that I was crazy to think I'd make it home and to tell him I was ok. Then I noticed that my phone was almost dead, and that the only charger I had was at home or at work.
In Part III: Without dry clothing, food I make a trip through the blizzard to Walgreens to get some supplies. I spend a night at the Marriott with some editors from the newspaper who have also been stranded.
****READ PART III: NJ declares a state of emergency and I spend a night at the Marriott.