Updated: 3/13/2008 12:26:39 AM
It may feel like spring, but this time 15 years ago, it was anything but pleasant. Wednesday, East Tennesseans remember the blizzard of 1993.
A beautiful East Tennessee day means the seasons will be changing soon, but on March 12, 1993, it looked more like winter than spring.
"It was the biggest one I remember, and I've been around a while," said Carolyn Craft.
"It was a year of crazy weather, nothing like today," Gail Byrd said.
Forecasters predicted the storm a few days before it hit, prompting many to flood grocery stores in preparation, but few could anticipate what was to come.
"Fifteen years ago, this area really got rocked with a big one," said WBIR Meteorologist Todd Howell.
Howell calls the storm one for the ages.
"I wasn't here yet. My understanding was it started out as some rain, some sleet, and quickly changed over to heavy, wet snow and just started coming down to beat the band," Howell said. "Big snowflakes, heavy snow and strong winds."
With more than a foot of snow in Knoxville and more than that in some areas of East Tennessee, many sought refuge in area shelters, but numerous road closures and massive power outages meant many East Tennesseans were stranded at home.
"We stayed in the house and each day we put a little more cover on, just kept putting on layers," said Craft. "We cooked some beans over a fondue pot with a candle under it. Took a while, but it was food."
"You can't see anything but walls of snow, which is something you don't see here very often," Hazel Manuel told 10 News during the storm.
"Just an incredible storm, a blizzard, a storm of the century, once-every-hundred-years type storm that our area has not seen in a long time," Howell said.
