The Days of Ice

January 14

JANUARY 14

7:30 A.M.
         The morning walk to class was cold, but that was to be expected during the winter. January for us even in the small town of Senatobia, Mississippi is the coldest month of the year. We were a college town with the Northwest Mississippi University. My first class of the day on this Monday was English Comp. II with Dr. Bounce. Dr. Bounce is an interesting character, if you saw him you would think who some kind of wild person. He bared is a little overgrown and turning gray and he drives a BMW motorcycle to school every day. I had a research paper due on climate change in less than a week. Climate Change is one of those subjects that can be a pain to write about, because we do not know how much of it is true. I choose it because I am a Meteorology major so it fit into my interest and major. My professor thought it was a good subject the only problems was finding research to back it up.
         Most of the time for the past two weeks I find myself reading through books and articles on climate change. One of my professors told me to look at past events that had happened to see if there is a pattern in climate change and to look to see how much human involvement caused it. So much of my first semester I spent researching for this paper. I really need to get a life.
         “Hey you,’ a voice said behind me. It was Rebecca who I have known since the fifth grade. We have done almost everything together except the date. I know that sound weird when you know someone for eight years, but nothing seems to have gone further than the dreaded friend zone.
         “Hey you ready for class,” I said. She gave me the look of I am always ready. The only thing I hate about the class is the time. I hate eight o’clock classes with a passion. The good thing is that I had Rebecca with me for the class which gave someone too talk to. Today most likely would just be a day to write and research for our paper.
         “Did you get that research you needed,’ I asked?
         “Yea, it took me a while to sort through all the information about horses,’ she said. Rebecca’s paper was on something to do with horses. Since I have known her, she has always wanted to be a vet.
         “Well here we are,’ she said and we walked into class.
10:00 A.M
         After going through English and Chemistry, I was back to doing research for my paper. More and more I cannot wait for this paper to be over. I find myself at this time being at the library looking at historical records of storms in our area. All I really see is a few storm reports at the most, so far it's just been wind damage from a few storms in the spring. As I continued to go through I found myself in records from the eighteen hundreds. As I look in the months of January and February I found a stretch of two weeks of temperatures below zero. Wind speed was about hurricane force, but the most shocking description was of snowfall. The record showed a twenty inch accumulation over the two week period. It was a blizzard that had struck, but there was only one record of it.
         I gathered the information that I had from this event. The only thing that concerns me is there was no date or time, only the year of 1891. If there was any one on campus that would know about this event, it would be Dr. Person who is the head of the meteorology and climatology department here at Northwest Mississippi University. What does not make since being that there was only one record of this event. If the event was as severe as it looked there should more records of it, but there was only the one in a two hundred mile radius. It was something that I needed to find out because it could fit very well into my research paper plus it was a bit interesting to find that there was a major blizzard that could have happened here.
         After gathering the rest of my things I head over to my meteorology history course to talk Dr. Person about what I had found.
10:30 A.M.
         “Dr. Person is there a chance I can talk to you before class,” I asked?
         “Sure come on in to my office,” he replied.
         Dr. Person’s Office was pretty normal except for the twirling tornado model he had and all the weather photos. On the wall he has pictures of Hurricane Camille and super cell thunderstorms over the plains. My professor was wearing his usual white lab coat with his hair a little Messy from the cold wind outside.
         “So what is it you want to talk about Jason’” he asked?
         “I found an event that happened back in the eighteen hundreds, I was wondering if you knew anything about it. I can only find this one record of it,” I said, handing him the record of the storm from the library. He opens the file that I gave him and began to look through the report. As he read his face began to show concern, something that I have never seen from him before.
         “Dear god,” he said, putting down the file, “It is true.”
“So you have heard about it,” I said. He shook his head in agreement.
         “There were rumors of such a storm, most of us thought it was just an oral legend since there was no written proof about it. Now there is and now I get to teach it, but it's going to have to wait till next semester. I guess you will be using it in your report,” he said.
         “Yes”
         We both sat discussing the storm and what we knew about it. Then we went to class and study the history of meteorology.
11:50 A.M.
         After Class I sat right outside of western civilization taught by Mr. Backer waiting for Rebecca. Class was interesting and short, we only lasted about thirty minutes before he let us go. From inside the class I could movement and shuffling of chairs, the class was on its way out. One after the other people began to pour out of the classroom. Rebecca just smiled and headed over to me.
         “Hey, ready for lunch,” She asked smiling? I just shook my head and headed to the cafeteria for lunch. The walk was cold, thank goodness it was close to where her class was. We could choose from a multiple of things. Ranging from request home cook food to chick f lay. We meet up with our friends Jacob and Amber, they already had a seat saved for us along with a few other. Amber Waves at us from the table that they were sitting at.
          “Hey,” Amber said to us as we sat down.
         “Hey,” I said, “were is Jessie and Haley.”
         “On their way,” Jacob replied. Jacob and Amber are both sophomores here at Northwest Mississippi University. Jacob is a dental major while amber is an elementary education major. Jacob is the perfect weight for his height, his parents have more money than most family’s here, but he does not act like. He is really down to earth and every once in a while he will make a god awful scream to when needed. Amber is a little weird, but is very friendly and tries not to make anyone upset. Jacob and Amber since meeting each other have been dating for about a year and a half.
         About two minutes later Jessie and Haley came in. Jessie is an interesting charter at first glance with the red hair and the fact that he wears girls’ pants you make a simple judgment about him, of course once you get to know him you learn otherwise. Jessie is about average height and is slim. He is a Music Major here studying horn. He gets many questions about his sexuality, Jacob says it's because of the pants. Haley is very calm headed, she a little short but not too short. Has blonde hair and also plays the French horn. Pretty much everyone at the table does, except Amber and Rebecca.
         “Hey guys,” said Haley as she sat down at the table.
         “Hey,” I said.
         We spent a good hour chatting about our day. Amber explained how her roommate is getting on her nerves while we hear about the baby powder war in Jacob’s and Jessie’s dorm. When they asked about my day I told them how I found the storm record. They were amazed that something like that could happen all the way here in Mississippi. Most winter you may see a couple of inches of snow or an ice storm. You never really see a full force blizzard even in northern Mississippi.
         “Well, let hope this global warming thing is true, so that does not happen,” Jacob said, “I am not a fan of the cold.”
         “Jacob it is already cold outside,” Jessie said.
         “I know”
Jessie had a lab at one thirty while I had intro into weather forecasting. So the two of us left and headed to class. After putting our trays up and walking out the door back into the cold we headed to the science building.
         “So have you asked,” I asked?
         “Ask what”, Jessie replied, trying to dodge the subject.
         “You know exactly what I am talking about,” I said and he sighed and began to walk a little faster.
         “No”
         “You need to ask her, you will never know until you do,’ I said. Jessie and Haley have become real close in the last couple of months. Jessie has been trying to get the nerve to ask her out, but hasn't.
         “I know,” he said, “it is just really weird.” He said as he walked into the building, I continued to the next building which was the atmospheric science building to go to my class.
8:00 P.M.
         The rest of the day to this point was event less. Dinner was better than lunch speaking of the food that was served. I now found myself looking at a computer screen filled with weather data. I was watching to look at a possible polar vortex that could be coming down from the arctic, but I have been here for an hour and have not seen anything that would suggest anything. One of the things with weather forecasting is that one week out of the month we have to be in the lab to record weather data and make predictions.
         In the seat next to me was my partner Billy his real name is William Collins, but everyone calls him Billy.
         “We are going to be here all night looking for this,” Billy said sipping a little of his coffee. He was right this is going to take forever. Sometime you won’t see anything unless you wait and compare models.
         “Yep,” I said, “it is going to be a long night”.
         We look at several models looking for anything that could help make a forecast. The cool thing about the lab is that it is connected to the National Weather Service for our area. So if anything major popped up we could tell the forecasters that are working for the night. Me and Billy sat and did calculus II homework, I can say that I like math but I hate calculus. I am glad that Billy knows what he is doing otherwise I would be failing.
         My attention moved from the calculus to the computer screen. I was looking at a projected temperature model when I noticed that there was a strong cold air mass that was moving down from the arctic.
         “Billy look at this, “I said pointing to the screen. We both were shocked when we look at the values. The polar mass showed that there would be a forty degree drop in the high temperatures.
         “If that is true, it would put our highs in the single digits,” Billy said.
         “Well we found our polar vortex,” I said. Billy just shook his head and went to record the data that we were seeing. I began to look a time laps to see how long this would last, when an alert went off in the station next to me. The alert shocked me because it came from the tropical desk, which made no sense, since hurricane season was not until June. I went over to see what it was, on the way over I thought it was probably just a malfunction of something. Which is very possible as equipment breaks almost every week.
         The monitor shows a pressure drop in the Gulf of Mexico. As I looked into it, I could see that there were thunderstorms forming around the low pressure system that was forming. What baffled me was it was January and it showing a tropical system forming in the Gulf. There had to be something wrong a polar vortex and a tropical system at the same time makes no sense what so ever.