The giddy texts and videos came rolling in from my bundled-up sister in New Orleans on a historic day in the Big Easy.

“It’s snowing, it’s snowing, it’s snowing,” she whispered, her eyes wide in disbelief, as she stood on her front porch in a rarely worn winter hat and scarf.

In fact, it snowed on Tuesday in record amounts across the South, including subtropical New Orleans, typically 62 degrees in January. This wasn’t just a few flakes, but 8 inches in one long continuous snowfall in the Crescent City, the most accumulation New Orleans has experienced in recorded history. Other records set across the South include Mobile, Alabama, with 7.5 inches; Milton, Florida, with 10 inches; and Pensacola, Florida, almost 8.

The pictures Susan sent of snow falling and collecting on palm trees, wraparound porches and wrought-iron fences in her Garden District neighborhood added to the multitude of whimsical photos New Orleanians were posting online: Blissed-out local news commentators playfully tussled with each other as snow fell at Audubon Park.

Makeshift brass bands, dressed in whatever winter garb they could dig up, paraded through the famed French Quarter.

I came across pictures of snowmen with Mardi Gras beads in place of scarves and videos of a man playing ice hockey across Canal Street, another skiing down Bourbon, and another who had transformed his river air raft into a snow boat, which he propelled throughout his neighborhood, a broad smile stretched across his face.

The blatant delight that New Orleanians found in the rare snow storm ushered in for me memories of being a child with my three sisters in upstate South Carolina.

The slightest hint from the weatherman that there might be snow would send four little girls a-titter to the window, noses plastered to the glass, eyes glued skyward.

A single flake, a second flake, and the house was given to shrieking.

If we were lucky, there would come a big snow and suddenly, where there was tedium and routine and Mama and Daddy somber, overwrought parents, came just cause for celebration and ritual.

Mama’s banana bread pans would emerge from the cupboard along with cans of Carnation milk for snow ice cream. Snowsuits and galoshes came out of closets for the little girls.

Daddy would come home from the filling station early and get out the old metal signs from when he worked at the Green Stamp company.

Bending the signs back with his bare hands, he’d create a toboggan handle for us to hold onto as we flew down the hill in front of our tiny house.

I can feel myself now sitting on the cold, hard sign, waiting for Daddy to let go, my cheeks puffed up to my eyeballs, so full in my heart that we were all together, and happy.

After a while, one of the little ones would start crying and we would retreat inside to warm banana bread and Mama stirring vanilla into mounds of fluffy snow that would turn into snow ice cream.

It was just a day. We’d go back soon enough to school and homework and chipped beef on toast. But for a minute, we were in the center of a living snow globe, childish dreams of sugar plum fairies and Narnia-coated trees sprung to life.

A crusty Ohioan now where it’s been snowing for a month, I thought of the innocent delight of this grown-up snow day, even as I knew next-day reports were coming.

The simple joy of snow, I knew, would soon give way to dealing with 130,000 without power throughout the region. Roads and airports were closing, making travel and work impossible. Hundreds of flights were canceled as deaths mounted in storm-related accidents and incidents related to cold exposure.

Tuesday’s fun in the snow would cave to the more sober realities of a generational storm, including politically charged debates about climate change in the shadow of a new president taking office this week.

In New Orleans, especially, I know this battered but resilient city would return to continuing fallout from its most recent local tragedy when a deranged man intentionally drove his truck into a New Year’s Eve crowd on Bourbon Street, killing 14 and injuring at least 30. The city and its residents would go back to grappling with criticism of an inefficient infrastructure that many say allowed such an event to occur.

Meanwhile, for just a minute, the people of New Orleans got to have a snow day.

“After the horrific and terrifying events of January 1st,” my sister texted me, “Tuesday brought badly needed joy back to us — not to minimize the grief and horror of the terror attack, but to, if only for a moment, lift us up from our sorrow.

“I watched all the local news coverage, and the reporters were downright silly. They were on camera making snow angels and having snowballs fights.

“The journalists and the reporters that covered the attack in the beloved city, now got to bring images and stories of sheer delight to us.

“Everybody, from the very youngest to the oldest, seemed to have a twinkle in their eye.”

On the night after it snowed when we were little, my sisters and I would go to bed happy, fulfilled, with a memory nobody could ever take away, which even now I remember and turn to.

And so may it be for my sister and New Orleans and all of us.

In the midst of it all, may we always remember the simple joy of a snow day.

©2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC