A Real Winter on the Crystal Coast

This post was originally written January 2018. My WordPress Blog is currently down and in transition so my apologies if you were looking for another post. I hope to have everything working again soon.

On the afternoon of December 23, 2017, our outside temperature peaked at seventy degrees Fahrenheit. We were hosting a Christmas party, but I ended up dressed for the weather with shorts and t-shirt.

Since then we have gotten a dose of winter weather unlike any that we have experienced since we moved down here in September 2006. I can look back fondly at our first winter when we recorded only 19 hours of below freezing temperatures for the whole winter.

I can assure you that we got more cold hours than that today, Friday, January 5, 2018. We might have gotten to 34 degrees between two and three PM. Tomorrow and Sunday are even worse. The temperatures are not expected to get above freezing.

We are not strangers to some cold weather or ice and even a little taste of snow, but this is beach country. Most of us are here because we love the water but are not so fond of frozen precipitation. The last measurable snow before our January 2018 snowfall of four inches was seven years earlier in January 2011. That was a normal storm for us. The snow came, we enjoyed it for a few hours and it disappeared. This current storm has staying power.

This snow while not significant by northern standards came Wednesday night and likely will be around until Monday when the temperature is finally going to make it above freezing. Because this is a Southern snow, it quickly turned to ice wherever it was driven over. This ice would be a challenge to some of the best snow removal crews, but many of us at the coast live in areas without any snow removal equipment. We are just going to have to wait for the snow to melt.

Fortunately we are not being sentenced to a true Northern winter. We are just getting a tiny but extended taste of it. Next week our high temperatures are in the mid-fifties and we do not even get below freezing. By Friday we can look forward to a high temperature of sixty-four Fahrenheit.

All this snow and cold will just be a fading memory. Unfortunately, we will have to live with the after effects of the cold temperatures which have dropped as low as ten degrees Fahrenheit. The trout season is closed until summer because of the cold stun which is no surprise given that the water temperature of the sound and river are down to thirty-four degrees. Many of our plants are not used to weather this cold so we could be replacing plants this summer.

Let us hope it is another seven years before we see any additional snow. I am counting on it being a few decades before we see cold of this severe again. I had more than my share of snow in my sixteen years in Canada. While I will be happy to see the snow go, it did make for some pretty pictures. This Snowy January 2018 is a link to an online album of pictures taken near our home just off the White Oak River, a few miles from the beaches of Emerald Isle and the coast charm of Swansboro.

As February draws near and spring is on the horizon, we will be seeing more and more sunshine. I’m ready for it. Maybe this next warm stretch will provide enough heat to do more than just a quick boat ride down to Swansboro. A long boat ride would be a nice late winter distraction.

Having the right weather and a pleasant place for walking helped to bring us to North Carolina’s Southern Outer Banks.

You will find more stories about life along the Crystal Coast, that part of the Southern Outer Banks where we live, at Life Along The Crystal Coast.