As a rule, Hatteras and Ocracoke islands don’t get much snow in the winter. And when it does snow for a short time, the wind is usually blowing so hard that the flakes fly by quickly — sometimes so quickly they are barely visible.
However, the island has seen four significant snow storms in the past 25 years, beginning with the Christmas Blizzard of 1989.
Twenty-five years ago on Dec. 23, it started snowing. It kept on snowing the next day, Christmas Eve. And by Christmas Day, Hatteras and Ocracoke were covered in a record 13.3 inches of snow.
It really was a white Christmas — and one that few who were around then will soon forget.
The wind blew really hard from the northeast and then the northwest, and the snow, as is usual on the islands, was blown into drifts. Some places were almost bare, while nearby, there were drifts many feet high.
This storm also ushered in very cold temperatures, and the Pamlico Sound was frozen all along the shoreline, in the creeks and canals, and, in some places, out as far as the eye could see.
The freezing temperatures stuck around long enough after Christmas that pipes were bursting all along the islands and boats were frozen in their berths.
The Christmas blizzard was shortly before I moved to Hatteras, but I did, for many years, visit the island for a week between Christmas and New Year’s, mostly because I loved the islands just as much in winter as in summer and I enjoyed the slower pace and the lovely and lonely winter beaches.
Just before Christmas of 1989, the late Buster Farrow — a great builder — and his crew began construction of a house for me in Brigands’ Bay, so I was especially eager to get to Hatteras and check it out.
My son, his college roommate and I left Louisville, Ky., early in the morning on Dec. 26.
It was snowy and icy in Kentucky as we headed east on I-64 toward West Virginia. Cars were sliding all over the hilly roadway. Travel was terrible and at Lexington, Ky., we decided to head south toward Tennessee and North Carolina on I-75.
We drove out of the snow and ice before Knoxville, and the drive through the Smoky Mountains to Asheville wasn’t too bad. Across the length of North Carolina we saw little or no snow and made good time.
We knew, though, about the snow storm on Hatteras Island because we had talked to a friend here on Christmas night.
As I remember, we started noticing the snow along the sides of the highway west of the Outer Banks. By the time we pulled into the Pizza Hut in Manteo for dinner, we were amazed.
The Pizza Hut looked more like a restaurant at a ski resort. The parking lot had been plowed and the snow was piled into stacks that were taller than we were.
We left there, not sure what to expect.
There was little or no snow through Bodie Island, but as soon as we got off the Bonner Bridge on northern Hatteras, the snow was back — up to a foot on both sides of the highway, which was pretty clear by then.
For several days, we enjoyed the novelty of snow everywhere. On the beaches, the wind and warmer water had pretty well cleared it off, but it remained in the dunes and on the ramps.
On the South Beach near Ramp 49, my son and roommate made a snowman — a sight I never expected to see. The few folks driving by stopped to chat and admire it.
We rode the ferry to Ocracoke, where Silver Lake was just as frozen as the harbor in Hatteras village.
As is often the case, the weather quickly warmed up. By New Year’s Eve, it was up around 60 degrees — sweater weather — and foggy, very foggy.
We were exploring the soundside and old cemeteries behind Little Kinnakeet Life-Saving Station, when we watched a very eerie fog bank blow in off the Pamlico Sound and surround us.
There wasn’t much snow to speak of on the islands for another 14 years. Yes, it snowed, but it never amounted to much.
Then on Jan. 23, 2003, there was another blizzard on Hatteras and Ocracoke.
Well, this one was not officially declared a “blizzard” by the National Weather Service. A meteorologist explained to me at the time that it wasn’t considered a blizzard because the duration of the event was not long enough, the temperatures were not cold enough, and the wind didn’t blow hard enough.
To be classified as a blizzard, he said, a storm must have at least white-out conditions with visibilities less than 1/4 mile and winds of 35 miles per hour or more.
He did admit that there were blizzard conditions at some places on the Outer Banks that day, and, as far as those of us who live here are concerned, the storm of Jan. 23, 2003 was indeed a blizzard.
It started snowing before daylight and continued for much of the day. In the late afternoon, a neighbor in Brigands’ Bay measured a wind gust of 51 mph and the temperature was 22 degrees.
Officially, 12 inches of snow fell on Hatteras, and 10 inches on Ocracoke. It was a record 24-hour snowfall. (The Christmas Blizzard snow fell over two days and was not a 24-hour record, but a record nonetheless for a single storm.)
The next day was cold and sunny, and all of us on the islands got busy enjoying the snowfall — taking photos, driving around in ORVs, checking out the beaches, making snowmen and women.
The young and young at heart were having a great time “sledding” on the sand dunes. Since almost no one on the islands owns a sled, folks were improvising with anything they could find — boogie boards, surf boards, or any large piece of plastic.
The next snow event on Hatteras and Ocracoke was on Jan. 20, 2009.
This one was not a blizzard by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, officially only about 2 inches of snow was measured. But, then, as I’ve noted, accumulating snow is a rare event on the islands.
A cold drizzle fell on Hatteras and Ocracoke for most of that day, as snow lovers pulled for the temperatures to fall below freezing before the precipitation ended. Finally, it happened in late afternoon, and by dark the snow was accumulating quickly.
This one was lovely and fun. And, although folks from up north might find this fact curious, two inches of snow brought the islands to a screeching halt. Jan. 21 was already a school holiday, but county offices were closed the next day, as were other work places, and all events were cancelled.
The next big snow storm came just two years later — on Jan. 22, 2011. The snowfall totals weren’t as much as in 1989 or 2003, but the amount that did fall was unexpected.
Here is what I wrote in The Island Free Press on the morning after the storm:
“What one television weatherman called ‘an overachieving low,’ brought heavy snow and blizzard-like conditions to Hatteras and Ocracoke islands on Saturday, Jan. 22.
The rare heavy snow storm surprised not only islanders but also weather forecasters at The National Weather Service office in Newport, N.C.
?We were not expecting this much,? said forecaster Jeremy Schulz by phone today.
There was no snow in the forecast until about Friday afternoon when the Weather Service issued a snow advisory for the area, including the southern Outer Banks. Still, the forecast was for 1 to 2 inches.
That was still the forecast when the snow started falling about 10 o?clock on Saturday morning.
The snow got heavier as the day went on and the north/northeast winds picked up ? gusting up to 40 mph at times. In the early afternoon, the Weather Service changed the winter weather advisory to a winter storm warning.
The heavy snow and gusty winds caused white-out conditions by late afternoon on Saturday.
The snow tapered off and ended about 10 p.m.
According to the Weather Service, the total in Frisco at Billy Mitchell Airport and at Rodanthe and Ocracoke was 6 inches.”
However, you can see from the photos in the slide show with this blog, that more than 6 inches fell in some areas on the islands. Most folks thought the snow total was more like 8 inches.
Again, islanders celebrated the event with snowmen, snowball fights, and “sledding” on the dunes.
It’s fun to look back over the photos from our island snow storms and to wonder when we’ll see the white stuff again.
The one really nice thing about these storms on the islands is that usually the temperatures warm up quickly, so the snow doesn’t stick around long enough to be too big a pain or get icy and dirty.
Perhaps this will be the winter for another one of those rare island snow storms.
Click here to see the slide show of the snow storms of 1989, 2003, 2009, and 2011.
