January 28, 2014 is a day that many in our area will never forget. There was a prediction of snow flurries with the possibility of slight accumulation. Most of the snow was predicted to hit south of the city. My Tuesday morning started out really early as some of our teachers and I were visiting another Christian school in Atlanta. We left NCCS early in the morning and chatted a bit about our thoughts on whether or not the snow would ever pan out. When we arrived at the school we were visiting, one of their high school guys was getting out of his mom’s car carrying a sled “just in case”. We decided quickly that we liked his style!
We finished up our visit at the school and headed back towards NCCS a few minutes after 10:00. As we were driving north on I-75, snow flurries started and they were pretty heavy. We swung through Starbucks and headed back to school arriving a few minutes before 11:00. Ten minutes later there was a class change and all of our kids were so excited! By then the snow was really falling and starting to accumulate all around. By 11:30 we made the announcement that we would be dismissing school at 12:30pm. The only thing cooler than getting a snow day? Being the principal that gets to make the announcement to the kids that we are getting a snow day! The place practically erupted with excitement!
Clint and I had talked that morning and agreed that he would come and pick Emma up if we dismissed early since I’d have to wait until all my students were picked up to head home. I gave him a quick call at 11:30 and he hopped in the car to head to school. He was even kind enough to take my lunch order to grab me some Chick-fil-A on his way.
At 12:20, I headed out front to help with carline. As I passed our food services manager, I jokingly asked her “What’s for dinner?” By this time the Lower School students were in the gym waiting for their folks to pick them up. As soon as I got out to carline, you could tell that this snow was much more than anyone anticipated. We ran carline for 30 minutes and only a small handful of our students were picked up. At 1:00 we had all the remaining middle and upper school students head to the gym to stay warm and dry. Our Fine Arts Director, Matthew, and I stood outside and greeted parents for a long time after that as they made their way into the parking lot. Some people had been in traffic at that point already for over an hour and were telling us crazy stories about the roads surrounding school. Matthew and I realized that this was going to be a long day.
After a while, we came up with a plan to shuttle students in groups of 4 or less up to the Citgo gas station on the corner of our campus so that their parents wouldn’t have to drive down the icy drive on our campus. That made for some fun for a few hours. The snow was beautiful and it really kept snowing for a long time! Traffic on the highway in front of our school quickly backed up and the gas station on the corner of our campus had a long wait for all of their gas pumps.
Remember that Clint left our house at 11:30am? It’s normally about a 15 minute drive from our house to school…anytime of day. Clint arrived a few minutes before 2:30pm. He had some really crazy stories of all of the traffic that he had encountered on the way. By that point, we all had reports of NCCS parents stranded all around town. We still had close to 250 kids at school and the cars coming through to pick kids up dwindled to about 1 car per 10 minutes. The talk of what to serve for dinner picked back up and we were all excited to hear that we were having hot dogs! We also started talking about overnight plans as it was pretty evident that some folks would be staying the night. By the way…we are not a boarding school, so spending the night there is not a normal thing! But…the afternoon definitely made for a fun adventure!
Around 6pm, we announced that food was available in the cafeteria. They didn’t want to say “dinner” because they didn’t want any of the little kids to be worried. Of course, our Emma cleared that up pretty quickly. All the aftercare workers said “Y’all come sit down for your snack.” Emma quickly responded, “This isn’t a snack…it’s dinner, it’s dark outside.” Fortunately no kids seemed too scarred by that! Emma was having a blast hanging at school with her friends and her favorite teachers. Clint had decided just to stay at school after his crazy trip there. We figured it would be best if the three of us stuck together at that point.
After dinner we started seeing more folks working together on Facebook and Twitter to coordinate rides and the best routes around town. Several people in 4 wheel drive vehicles came by school to give people rides. My assistant and friend Patti decided that she and her daughter and her daughter’s friend would make a run for it. They got about a 1/2 mile down the road in a little over an hour and were stranded. Patti called me, so I told her we would come rescue them in the golfcart. One of our facilities staff guys Graeme headed out with me. As we got on the side of the highway to rescue Patti, we saw a ton of people walking up and down the street. It was almost eerie…tons of people walking in an area that doesn’t normally see people walking, snow everywhere, traffic totally backed up, and no idea how this was all going to turn out. There were a lot of families walking and Graeme and I offered to give folks a lift down the road. They told us to keep going that there was a man with a baby up ahead. We sped up and sure enough…there was a man with a baby and a little boy…none of them had on coats and they were obviously very cold and had a long way to go.
I called Patti and told them to stay in their car while we helped some folks out. Graeme and I picked up the man and his kids by the football field on the edge of the NCCS campus. We asked him where he was headed and he asked us to take him down to the corner. He had run out to pick his kids up from daycare almost 7 hours earlier and they had to abandon their car in order to get home to feed the baby. The baby was 4 months old. Graeme and I got him to the corner and told him that we couldn’t leave him there. He told us he lived around the corner and we told him we’d be happy to take him there. In the end, he lived about 2 miles from where we originally picked him up. I really don’t think they ever would have made it. Graeme and I were so excited that God gave us the opportunity to drop this sweet family off right at their doorstep.
We headed back towards school and picked up Patti and the girls. One humorous thing about that…we got them down the road a bit and then the golfcart started running out of juice. We all had to get out and push, but finally we hit the downhill and coasted back to the warm and dry school building. We were all full of stories to share with our friends back at school!
Over the next few hours, more 4 wheel drive angels came by and drove folks home. Around 12:30am, it was pretty evident that we were set with about 15-20 people that were going to spend the night at school. Most of them were by choice as they had battled traffic for several hours already and just wanted to get a good night’s rest. All of my high schoolers had been picked up by around 9:30pm and fortunately we had heard good reports of folks making it home safely after several hours in the car.
Clint, Emma, our friend Rachel, and I all decided we would go for it and try to get home. Just as we were headed out, the Acworth Police Chief…a good friend…stopped by school to check on all of us. He gave us an official road report and then we hit the road at 1am. We had a little trouble getting out of the parking lot and then finally got out on the roads. Highway 41 was clear and we made great time getting most of the way towards our house. Unfortunately both Highway 92 and Cedarcrest were parking lots…stalled and abandoned cars, wrecked cars, and folks sliding around. Those are the main two ways to our house, so we started out to find another route. Our good friend Leigh Ann was texting the whole time to check on us. She said she was going to stay up until we made it home safely.
We headed back over towards Mars Hill and then cut over to Acworth Due West and then Stilesboro through Brookstone. We made it to the back of Brookstone before we got stuck on an icy hill around 2:30am. We got it turned around and then got stuck again. Our friend Leigh Ann offered to come and rescue us since we were less than a mile from their house. We got stuck again and parked our car and walked up to where the Geter’s had parked their warm Expedition (aka winter weather rescue wagon) at the top of the hill to take us to their house. We got to their house around 3:15am. They quickly got us all settled and tucked in for the night…what was left of it that is!
At 8am our Headmaster texted me and asked me to put the word out that the folks at school needed some 4 wheel drives to come pick them up and take them home. I put the word out on Twitter and Facebook and so did Leigh Ann. About 10 minutes later, he said to call off the 4WD roundup as everyone had a ride home. The school was cleared out by 9:15am almost 24 hours after the snow had originally started.
We enjoyed some snow day waffles at the Geters and then our awesome neighbor Corrie Jones came and rescued us in her Jeep. It was really crazy to see how icy the roads still were as we slowly made our way home. Later than afternoon Corrie took me back to rescue our car and I was able to drive it home. We spend the remainder of the afternoon sledding, making snowmen, and having a wonderful family snow day! We cancelled classes the next two days also because there was still a ton of snow and ice all around town.
So…going back to our skepticism on Tuesday morning about the predicted snow flurries? After 3 inches of snow and 3 1/2 snow days…we all survived Snow Jam 2014. So grateful that folks were safe and we really have some fun memories of this crazy adventure!
