Maybe the snowbirds have it wrong — heading south to escape winter snow and cold. Places like New Orleans, Louisiana; Biloxi, Mississippi and Tallahassee, Florida have been blanketed in record snowfall and bitter cold temperatures the past few days.
Gloria Hegidio is a Bend local who is in Florida trying to escape the snow and cold, only to have those conditions catch up with her there.
“We had a record snowfall. It hasn’t happened in over 130 years,” Hegidio said. She’s a board member for the Cascades Theatrical Company and an actor who appears on stage in local productions.
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“Milton, Florida, which is right outside of Pensacola, had the record amount of snow at nine inches. You can see my parents car here is covered. We’ve just been hunkered down. Luckily I had bought a jacket with some palm trees on it. At least I’ve got a little Florida vibe going on,” Hegidio said.
Parts of the Gulf Coast were under their first ever blizzard warning the past few days. Snowfall totals are reminiscent of a Bend snowstorm with nearly nine inches in New Orleans, seven inches in Mobile and 10 inches in Tallahassee.
“It’s rare to get this kind of snow along the Gulf Coast,” said Dorrell Wenninger, Chief Meteorologist for Central Oregon Daily News.
“I was taking to my mom as she was hunkered down and the snow was falling. She sent me several videos of the snow accumulating at my childhood home (in Long Beach Mississippi). It was so interesting to see. She told me that the last time this happened was in the 1960s when she was six years old. The time before that was in the 1800s.”
Meanwhile here in Central Oregon, city snowplows sit idle while road crews patch potholes, fix guard rails and prepare for spring and summer road maintenance projects.
“Along the Gulf Coast states, they actually got more snow than we’ve had this entire season,” Wenninger said.
Should we feel jealous?
“No, because for us, six inches is a headache. They don’t have plows to help them get through this,” Wenninger said.
“We can’t leave. They are keeping people off the roads. The interstates are closed. All the schools are closed. Kids are making snowmen and loving it. But all of us old folks, no shopping, no beach, just cold weather,” Hegidio said.
The situation along the normally sunny Gulf Coast is so desperate, the City of New Orleans has brought in snowplows from Indiana to help clear the streets of the Big Easy.
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