Jan. 9—When sunrise arrived Monday morning, my neighborhood was covered in snow capped by a thin layer of ice. I still had my power and I’m thankful for that, but thousands of other people across the region had lost their electricity thanks to the winter storm. I went outside, got a snow shovel and started cleaning off my car while I debated whether to try driving from the Princeton area to Bluefield. The main road was still icy even though state road snowplows were coming through. The snow and ice encasing my car crumbled when I hit it with my fists and brushed it away. Shoveling it was another matter. Rain had added to the snow’s weight, so it was like shoveling wet cement. With a lot of digging and pushing, I dug a path to my side road and another for my neighbor’s car. Then I walked up the street and spoke with an elderly couple I know. They didn’t need to go anywhere and didn’t need their driveway shoveled out just yet, but I checked their mail for them. I had checked the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Va. and saw that a winter storm warning was going on until 7 p.m. Monday night so I decided to work from home and avoid getting marooned in Bluefield overnight. Working from home became my way of life both times I had Covid and I came to miss being in the newsroom. Now I know a lot of people like working from home, but I came to dislike it. I just don’t feel that disconnect between home and work. Worse, I feel that I have to do things like laundry and a quick bit of cleaning which adds to what I’m doing already. Communicating is an issue, too. I’d rather yell across the newsroom than text or call back and forth. I got out the newsroom laptop I always keep with me so I can work in the field or from home if necessary. Using my cellphone as a connection, I clocked in and got to work checking the Appalachian Power outage map and making phone calls. Thousands of people had lost power across the land where the Virginias meet and I learned after a while that the power company wasn’t expecting to restore service to everyone until 11 p.m. Wednesday, On “Star Trek,” Chief Engineer Scotty always doubled the time it would take to make repairs when Captain Kirk asked him. Scotty said that let him keep his reputation as a miracle worker. I’m hoping for the sake of those thousands of people that the power company is doing the same sort of thing. Temperatures have been dropping into the single digits as a weather front carries arctic air over us. It seems that we’re going from extreme to extreme. During the summer the temperatures soared into the upper 80s. Next came the winds and rain of Hurricane Helene and now a winter storm with polar temperatures. I think of all those power line crews working out in the cold so people can get their electricity back and stay warm. Looking to the right shows me the blowing snow outside my window. Working in those conditions take a lot for fortitude. The same goes for all the snow plow operators crisscrossing the countryside. A state plow came up my side road and pushed away the snow blocking it from the main road. I gave the driver the thumbs up to show my appreciation. Driving through blowing snow all day and all through the night takes a lot of fortitude, too. They do this grueling job so the rest of us can get to work, get to the grocery store and go home at night. Even now, I now hear a plow truck’s blade scraping the pavement outside and the jingling of its salt spreader and I’ll likely keep on hearing those noises. Hopefully the power’s back on well before Thursday morning dawns. The people around this region have endured a lot of rough weather events and I know they would like a break from Mother Nature flexing her muscles. We’ve been through storms before and they will keep on coming, but we need to take time and remember line crews, plow operators, first responders and others working to keep life moving ahead until the storm passes and the sun actually shines again and warms the air.
Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com