Memphis is woefully unprepared for severe weather conditions. Mostly it’s local politics that deny that we even have this type of weather. But the electrical grid hasn’t been updated in a long time. Growing up, such events get names like hurricanes on the East Coast. The Ice Storm of ‘94 being one of them. Though Memphians don’t know how to handle these conditions, we at least have a sense of humor about them.
Growing up there was a phrase that is terribly outdated and insensitive today: “Memphis weather is schizophrenic.” This is to say that the weather can swing from spring day to a winter night to a summer-like morning.
In 2021 Memphis had a blizzard. At that time I had a Mazda2 that was tiny and unequipped to deal with large amounts of snow. In early February snow began to fall. Though we are used to a couple of inches, the snow continued to fall. And the temperature was steady over that weekend. The next couple of days proved the same. The snow didn’t even ice over! But it didn’t.
My work tried and failed to open that Monday. Two hours in we closed and I had to leave my car in the middle of a frozen parking lot to ask a coworker for a ride home. And I was promptly locked into my apartment. Time, sanity, and the use of water were lost for over a week. The only thing that brought me back to the concept of sanity was to marathon a bunch of movies.
Flash forward to 2022. I’m about to move out of Memphis. The last thing I wanted to do was plan a movie marathon like last year. But a couple of days beforehand there was heavy rain for most of the night before the temperature dipped into the low twenties. And everything iced over.
This time the power kept cutting off. Tree branches began to break off from the sheer weight of the ice, coming down onto power lines. Over 100,000 households were without power. This went on for several days as well. And yet, in spite of all these complications, I still had a movie marathon with friends. This time I cooked for everyone.
Being prepared for terrible weather is difficult. But during theses crises it is good to seek family and friends. To come up with names for the cursed weather, to joke and eat in a communal manner, or to watch silly movies with each other. We need each other to deal with these tragedies. To distract each other. To help each other through it all.
Both blizzards and ice storms receive one star each, but they don’t have to be after the fact. As long as we stick together and help each other.