How the snow storm in Beaufort last week was like your annoying mother-in-law

If you recently moved from New Hampshire out to Fripp or Harbor island or somewhere else near Beaufort’s coast, you almost have to think you’re cursed. The ice and snow that you escaped after years of dealing with snow shovels and anti-freeze has annoyingly followed you like an elderly mother-in-law.

Here you are in Beaufort, where the snow comes every 29 years or so.

This time it stuck around, too.

Having snow here happens about as often as a school outside the South wins a national football championship. But it has taught us several things:

▪  Snow can exist in our local ecosystem. It’s not just something we see on vague weather reports from Denver or awful Hallmark Christmas movies that start airing in September.

▪  Hot chocolate supplies can run out quickly with kids in the house. It turns into thinner hot cocoa after a while and then “hot water with hint of chocolate shavings” soon enough.

▪  Those same kids, suffering cabin fever, can’t conveniently be sent outside without full winter coats. You know, the downed puffer ones bought back in October during that 55-degree “cold snap?” They also need a head covering, lest they slip on the ice and we have to free their stuck ears from the sidewalk with warm water.

▪  If we do get out, we have to allow a good 20 minutes for the engine to warm, just like that ’81 Silverado we owned in high school. In 1997.

▪  It is a great opportunity for student drivers to head to empty parking lots and practice what, in all likelihood, they’ll have to drive through at least once or twice more in their lives if they stick around Beaufort.

Not that the snow was all bad.

Some of the young and the not-quite-as-young did get out to take advantage of it.

Kids in Walling Grove were seen riding boogie boards on the back of trucks, while kids in Mossy Oaks jumped on tubes and held on while 4-wheelers towed them through snow-paved streets.

Others used cardboard to sled down the bluffs overlooking the bay on Bay Street and outside of TCL, possibly hoping the ride would stop before a true marsh landing. In most cases, parents and grandparents joined in the fun.

On the Thursday after the storm, some grocery stores were filled with bread but out of milk. By late Friday the reverse was true. Apparently, the same folks who had raided the Captain John Derst were back for the re-supply of Borden.

By Friday afternoon, some of us had learned to drive slowly over the ice, though one driver attempting to use the Naval Hospital turnoff in Port Royal skidded right off Ribaut Road. No one else seemed bothered as he pushed his car back onto the road. It’s tough to get angry at a traffic jam when you’re only going 7½ miles an hour.

By the time we all figured out how to deal with this snow thing, we can take comfort in the fact that we don’t have to worry about it too often.

In fact, let’s all try to remember this weather in August, when we’re melting like last week’s snow.

This story was originally published January 10, 2018 at 12:59 PM with the headline "How the snow storm in Beaufort last week was like your annoying mother-in-law."