If you’re young or newer to Nashville, you’ve probably heard many of us old head locals reminisce about the ice storm of 1994 this week. It was one of the biggest ice storms in Middle Tennessee history, and its impact was very similar to Winter Storm Fern’s.
An Ice Storm Arrives
On Feb. 9, 1994, temperatures dropped from nearly 74 degrees to 23, and it began sleeting. That night, the sleet turned to freezing rain, coating powerlines, trees, and everything else. Across the South, more than two million people were left without power, including 100,000 in Middle Tennessee.
Not unlike this week’s storm, NES crews worked 16-hour shifts to restore power. Hundreds of trees fell, damaging homes and making travel treacherous. It was weeks before Nashville was back on the grid.
Our 1994 Ice Storm Memories
I was 10 when the ice storm hit, and lived in a rural area of White Bluff, about an hour outside Nashville. Our power went out immediately, and we all gathered into the living room with the fireplace crackling: My parents, two sisters, a neighboring teen, four dogs, four cats, and a cockatiel. We covered windows, doors, and the bird’s cage with blankets, and piled the remaining blankets on couches and mattresses pulled out from bedrooms.
We cooked canned food over the fire, played games, and got on each other’s nerves. Schools reopened before we had power back, and we drove to my grandparents’ house in Madison to take showers. A nearby nursing home was also still without power, and when a local news crew reported on its outage, our power was finally restored. We were out of power for three weeks, though it felt like months.
City Cast Nashville host Marie Cecile Anderson lived in Nashville’s Oak Hill neighborhood. They didn’t have power for two weeks after a hackberry in their front yard came crashing down across power lines. Most of their neighbors went to hotels, but their dad loved the idea of camping out in the house. The family stayed in a room with a cast-iron fireplace, with blankets nailed to the doors. They played cards, warmed up in their minivan, ate out at Shoney’s, and showered at the YMCA. Marie’s mom bought them each “teenager hygiene kits” from Walgreens with deodorant and other beauty products, which they loved. Their pets fared much worse than mine: Marie’s sisters’ pet birds froze to death, as well as one of her fish.
Other Big Ice Storms in Nashville
Folks older than me might remember what’s considered the worst ice storm in Nashville’s History: The Great Blizzard, which began on Jan. 29, 1951. In two days, Nashville was buried under eight inches of snow and ice. While we’ve had larger snowstorms, for us, ice causes the most destruction.
