It begins with a forecast: splotches of blues, greens and pinks on a blank map, a foot of snow here, chance of tornadoes there and an inch of ice over yonder. Uncertainty is the only thing that is certain at this point.
Then, in the coming days, weather models dance around predictions, shifting north and south, east and west, drastically altering outcomes for all of us on the ground only able to watch the sky in apprehension.
Yet before any real precipitation falls, a flood of Northern agitators washes through social media, regurgitating trite cliches about the South and winter: empty bread aisles, the little amount of snow it takes to grind us to a halt and haughty reminders of historical blizzards Northerners braved in flip flops and shorts.
One comment in particular that I encountered on X, posted by conservative radio host Jesse Kelly, read, “It will never stop being funny watching Southerners prepare for two days of freezing temperature as if it’s the ten plagues of Moses.”
These comments, though primarily made in jest, are characteristic of the nose-up, elitist Northern attitude towards the South and its people.
Winter Storm Fern, in retrospect, was the most bitter vindication for the South’s perceived panicked preparedness, or lack thereof, and underlies just why the South hates winter storms.
I began tracking this storm multiple days in advance, checking various weather models at six-hour intervals like an amateur meteorologist. It was obvious that I was not alone in my surveillance, as Oxford grocery aisles began to clear by midweek — a telltale sign of impending doom.
Also by midweek, weather models noted a drastic tick to the North for the storm, a shift that would prove to be damning for a large swath of the South with worse wintry precipitation. Over the course of a few days, Oxford’s forecast went from a pleasant snow day to a catastrophic ice storm.
By Friday, I, one of the South’s native sons, was prepared with non-perishables, batteries, bottled water, blankets and covered windowsills. All my dishes and laundry were done; this was not my first winter storm in the South. Bags of ice sat in my fridge with cooler bags at the ready. Bathtubs were full of water. Pitchers and large tupperware were filled with water for drinking.
What Northerners, in all their winter wisdom, consciously ignore in their diagnosis of Southerners as feeble panic-buyers and overreacters is that our infrastructure is not designed with once-in-a-generation winter storms at the forefront of mind.
It is cost-prohibitive to bury power lines, stock and maintain snow-plows and salt trucks for the occasional inch of snow, insulate houses for extreme cold and ensure every driver has snow chains and experience traversing black ice and blizzard conditions. Our preparations are not melodramatic frivolity — they are means for survival.
My midnight dash from Oxford to my hometown of Olive Branch, Miss., to escape dangerously cold temperatures in my house felt much more like a retreat than an evacuation. The trip, which usually takes me about 57 minutes, took three hours.
On Mississippi Highway 7, I watched the SUV in front of me lose control in the dark and dive into a ditch. On I-22, the road conditions worsened, and the severity of the situation was marked by the line of 18-wheelers on both sides of the interstate that had temporarily abandoned their journeys.
It was on these dark roads, no longer illuminated by street nor porch lights, that the aforementioned bitter vindication manifested itself. The cold, the hunger, the quiet, the apprehension, the pain in my legs from walking on inches of ice, all negate the levity imposed on this situation by ignorant Northerners, watching from the comfort of their winterized infrastructure.
As Oxford thaws, the reckoning begins. Thus far, 25 Mississippians have lost their lives. As these winter storms grow more intense, we must adapt and, regrettably, rip a page or two from the Northern winter handbook.
Logan Durley is a sophomore biological sciences major from Olive Branch, Miss.
