Jim Bradshaw
Roses are red, snow is white…
As we found out again this year, in south Louisiana we are more likely to have a White Valentine’s Day than a White Christmas. Records show that most of our substantial snowfalls over the last century or so have been in February.
This year’s snow began on the day after Valentine’s Day, but the cold snap that preceded it — and lingered way too long afterward — was here well in time to freeze creamy chocolates and wilt red roses.
But that’s not the first time it’s happened. The snowfall that set still-standing records in south Louisiana began on Valentine’s Day 1895.
The official form submitted to the National Weather Service by the weather observer in Lafayette for February 1895 carries this note: “Snow began falling on the night of the 13th — stopped before daylight — began again about 6:30 a.m. on the 14th and kept it up until about 10 o’clock a.m. on the 15th — about 14 inches of snowfall.”
The Crowley Signal of Feb. 16, 1895, had a long account of what happened when the snow came to Acadia Parish.
“At sunrise possibly an inch of snow had fallen here but the heavens gave every indication of a large reserve supply. By nine o’clock the blizzard was in full force and continued to rage all day and well into the night. For a little time yesterday morning the sun was visible through the mist, but by nine o’clock it had disappeared. … This was the heaviest snow for [this area] of which there is any record.”
The New Orleans Daily Picayune of Feb.15 reported, “There was not a sled, nor a snow plow, nor a sleigh in New Orleans day before yesterday. But improvised sleds and sleighs have been made and the uncommon sight of them in the streets called forth cheers from the pedestrians. … Drifts measured from 10 inches to one foot.”
The Baton Rouge Advocate reported on the 15th that “snow on our office gallery at 6 o’clock this morning was 10 inches, the deepest ever seen in this city.”
In Thibodaux, the Weekly Sentinel reported, “Beginning Wednesday night, February 13, snow began to fall around midnight and by noon of the next day had accumulated to a depth of 12 inches.”
According to the Opelousas Courier “On Wednesday night, shortly after 9 o’clock, it began snowing, and when the good people of Opelousas opened their eyes on Thursday morning the whole face of nature was covered with a white mantle two or three inches thick. The snow fell all day without the least intermission giving the town quite an Arctic appearance.”
My grandfather, who was 14 years old in 1895, recalled that he sank to his knees in the snow accumulated in his front yard in Lake Charles. That’s entirely likely. According to the old records Lake Charles got 22 inches of Valentine’s Day snow that year.
Some skeptics say those old records are not completely reliable, but I think they are entirely believable given the press reports from across the state.
According to those same documents, the 1895 storm still holds the all-time record for snow in a single community. That’s 24 inches that fell not in Shreveport or Monroe, nor any place in the frigid north, but down here in the balmy south in Rayne.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.
