Snowed In, OR How We Spent Our Christmas Eve During the Oklahoma Blizzard

We were lucky that my dad called us that morning to wake us and say, “Come home” because if we hadn’t left when we did, I’m pretty sure that we would not have made it 50 miles south. We were out of bed at 7am and both showered and packed everything in the car ready to go by 8am. It took us a few minutes to put gas in the car and by the time we were on the road out of Norman there was already a mix of freezing rain falling.

As always, people were driving like nuts in Norman and ignoring the slick roads. By the time we made it to the interstate it looked like the road was pretty clear, but it only took driving south about 10 miles before we saw an accident happen and had to call the highway patrol. That one was pretty scary and to see the car I think you’d be surprised to know that the guy was out of his car and on his cellphone just about the time that we were.

My route to Mom and Dad’s house is usually a winding one. I take one of the earlier exits and spend most of my time on small state highways instead of the interstate. There was no question on Christmas Eve — we were taking the interstate as far as we could. Cars littered the shoulder until we reached Pauls Valley. South of there it was much clearer. I chalk that up to the fact that, no apologies, people from rural areas are generally better at handling this kind of weather in an automobile than their city mouse counterparts.

As we had expected, the state highways were already rather slick and turning on to Highway 76 south was quite a surprise: the highway that runs in front of my parents’ house was the most treacherous we had come to. Finally, a few miles and one tree in the road later, we were home.

The rest of the day I watched the snow accumulate while my husband played video games with my younger brothers. Younger as in 23 and 21, in case you don’t know. I documented the snowfall throughout the day.

Back yard:

Front yard:

I had never seen anything like it. And it wasn’t so much the snow that was remarkable, but the wind with the snow. Forty to fifty mile per hour winds blowing snow across the rolling hills of southern Oklahoma is really something to see.

Our traditional Christmas Eve did not happen because we couldn’t travel the 35 miles to Duncan, Oklahoma, where one set of my grandparents are, to celebrate with them. Their area of the state really got hit the hardest with a ton of sleet and freezing rain dumped on the main highway that runs through town, shutting down most travel. Since we couldn’t make it over there my parents made the call that we were going to do our Christmas that night with dinner followed by opening gifts. Now, in my 25 years of living, they have never let us open a gift on Christmas Eve, much less made us open all of them. This was a record-breaking Christmas in more ways than one.

For my mom, I took a family picture of our snowed in selves right before we opened our gifts.

It was really a great time getting to celebrate with my immediate family and our new addition, even if nothing so far this holiday season had seemed to go right.

For the first time in my life, I woke up to a glittering, white Christmas morning.

Related posts:

1. UPDATE: Oklahoma Blizzard 2009
2. Plans, they are a’changin’…again.
3. This Christmas