70 Years Ago, Nashville Was Hit With The Worst Blizzard In History
By Meghan Kraft|Published January 29, 2019
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Meghan Kraft
Author
Meghan Kraft loves to travel the world, but she makes her home right here in Nashville, Tennessee. She holds a degree in English, and has worked in the digital marketing realm with companies such as Apartments.com, USA Today and HarperCollins Publishing.
When it comes to Nashville’s weather, most of the time folks scratch their heads in confusion. Locals like to joke that if you don’t like the weather, “just wait a while, it’ll change!” More often than not, that humorous sentiment tends to be true. In 1951, however, the state decided to herald the city of Nashville with a snowstorm to beat all snowstorms. It continues to be the heaviest blizzard in the city’s history and has finagled its way into state textbooks, forever remembered for its chilly ferocity.
On Sunday, January 28, 1951, it began to snow in Nashville. One can only imagine that the snowfall was initially met with the exuberance of a child, with excitement over the suddenly white landscape and the beauty of Middle Tennessee in wintertime.
Residents found themselves stocking up on bread, milk and eggs, ready for a few chilly days, but no one knew how intensely the storm outside would rage.
By Monday, January 29th the city was blanketed in ice. The ice posed a much more dangerous landscape than that of the snow, so cars stayed parked and folks huddle up at home. By Tuesday, the city was covered in a one-inch stretch of slippery ice.
The city officially went into lockdown on Wednesday morning. What looked like a fun day or two in the snow on Sunday had turned into a vicious snowstorm, with freezing temperatures, sleet and snow accompanying the chill. Here you can see the massive blanket of snow across parked Nashville cars in the wake of the storm.
Heavy winds knocked down trees and electric lines that were already heavy and thick with ice. Thousands of people and businesses lost power and therefore heat, immobilizing the city into February. With a -1 degree temperature reading all schools and city buses were shut down along with the 16,000 private homes that went without power. The airport was silent, and eight inches of snow paralyzed the city.
349 Nashvillians lost their lives in the blizzard of 1951. It wasn't until February 4th that the city began to breathe again, with the lowest temperature over the span of the storm coming in at -13 degrees. Millions of dollars in damage was caused by the storm.
Memphis loaned fifteen buses to the snow-stricken city, and the first area of town that was cleared was in West End. Nashville slowly defrosted over the month of February, but the snowstorm remains one of the most damaging and deadly in the state's history.
If you’re looking for a little more Nashville history, these photos from the early 1900s are a pretty neat look back in time.
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