Did you hear how quiet Clarksdale was this week? I’ve always been impressed with how snow silences the world.
There was no blues music, no cars riding with loud music and mufflers and the birds were even quiet as they looked for seeds in the snow.
In a town known for sounds, it was unusual to hear nothing.
I stood outside my snow covered truck in downtown Clarksdale Monday night and heard nothing.
It was not normal, but it did sound kind of neat.
Weather report
Clarksdale does not have an official weather spotter according to the National Weather Service out of Memphis, so that means we may not get an official temperature until a few days from now.
What we did get was a reading of 5-degrees on my thermometer at my house Monday night.
The cat was meowing, the dog wouldn’t go outside and I tromped through six inches of snow still on my patio to quickly get inside. I believe it was 5-degrees!
That tied a personal record for me in Mississippi.
In 1977 I saw a 5-degree reading in West Point. I was 17 and four of us climbed in a white Plymouth Valiant and rode out those red gravel roads in Northeast Mississippi. We were going hunting that morning. We lasted about an hour.
Elevation
The closest thing to a blizzard I have ever seen was at Milner Pass in Colorado.
Milner Pass stands at 10,759-feet and it was June 3. The snow was blowing so hard we pulled over to let it slow down.
We were living in Texas at the time and two weeks later I was sweating in 90-degree heat.
There was also the summer I did mission work in Alaska. We helped build an orphanage in Anchorage and painted a parsonage on farther inland.
When the rest of the mission team headed home, my cousins and I headed to Mount McKinley. We climbed to 16,000 feet and camped on a snowfield. My California cousins had been doing high sierra camping for years. It was a little much on this flat-land Mississippi boy.
Mt. McKinley is more of a walk than a climb. I was young then.
It was there I learned that cold – and boldness – can kill you. We walked past several memorials to dead climbers.
Cold concerns
I’m too old to stand the cold.
I came home Monday night and hurried inside to a bowl of soup.
At the table I asked if Sara and Daniel had been outside, to which Daniel replied it was freezing and he went back to his soup.
Yes, I was thankful for a hot meal, warm clothes and a warm house this week.
I picked up four people walking during our winter storm on Monday. They looked cold – it was cold – I couldn’t just pass them by.
Each thanked me when he got out. I in turn thanked my Lord for blessing me and my family with a nice warm house.
It is when we see other doing without that we often come to appreciate what we have.
I also want to thank CPU, police and firemen for venturing out in this cold weather and keeping us warm and safe.
Some people got to stay home during the storm. Some went to work to keep this community going.
Clarksdale
Did you see the Sunflower River was frozen over this week? Well, there is a photo on Page One if you didn’t venture outside.
An old-timers I spoke with said they can remember it freezing over, but never with snow on top like this week.
I got a picture of a tractor with a box blade clearing city streets in front of City Hall this week. Clarksdale and Coahoma County did the best they could with extreme weather conditions.
Your Clarksdale Press Register is the history book of this community.
In just the two short years I’ve been here we’ve seen COVID, crime, a bunch of community concerns and now the Winter of 2021. And I’m proud to say, Clarksdale seems to have weather it all just fine.
Floyd Ingram is the Editor of your Clarksdale Press Register. He likes seeing personal records broken and how sunny Southern towns stand up to the cold.
