It's getting hot around here. Our seventy-degree days have nudged into the eighties. Folks with air conditioners are closing windows that recently invited cool breezes to come and stay awhile. If we could go back in time, would it be to the second week in March, 1993?

While this part of the nation enjoyed slighter warmer wintertime temperatures back then, the weather people watched strange happenings far overhead.

A strong high-pressure area was building off the West Coast, creating a long trough of air east of the Rockies. By Friday morning, the jet stream 30,000 feet up was shoving it along with wind speeds approaching 175 mph. This weather-wall slowly turned north/south, sending twenty-to-thirty degree North Pole coldness straight into the Gulf of Mexico, where it collided with air fifty degrees warmer. Thunderstorms and tornadoes danced ahead of the front, producing thundersnow that's rare in the South.

By late afternoon, the storm's leading edge blasted across the Gulf with wind speeds gusting to nearly 120 mph, driving heavy, drenching, rain into Florida's western shores. As the following storm surge rose 12 feet higher than normal, many coastal residents fled to their rooftops, well above flooded streets and yards.

In Alleghany one of Mary Sue Johnson's ewes was ready to lamb, so the gentle shepherd prepared for a long night. Across the county Hubert Wagoner, Chief of the Laurel Springs Volunteer Fire Department, went about his usual tasks at home, likely worrying about what the cold darkness and wind might bring. Wayne and Eva Rice followed their familiar routine, too, but Wayne kept a wary eye on the barometer that would soon register air pressure below 29mb.

Heavy snow began falling around here on Friday afternoon, driven by winds as high as 105 mph on Flat Top Mountain. Walter Hampton joined his brother around three o'clock and hurried to get 200 dairy cows fed. Having the herd in two places complicated things.

"I was driving a tractor with a cab," recalls Walter Hampton, "but the windows froze over so bad I couldn't see." Wind gusts he estimated at 60 to 70 miles an hour piled snows into drifts and quickly buried roadside ditches.

As snow piled up, Alleghany Memorial's Director of Nursing, Jane McCarthy, called Thelia Hampton and asked her to be an "angel of mercy" by coming in to work on her day off. An ambulance would be sent to get her. That vehicle was escorted by a tractor and motor-grader, but went on past the house. The Hamptons' son took her to the hospital, where patients outnumbered staff by a significant margin.

Temperatures dropped to four degrees as the winter storm pounded its way up the eastern seaboard, closing airports, government facilities and highways. On Saturday evening, Bridgeport, Conn., was pelted by snowflakes as big as a person's fist. More than six feet of snow had fallen there in just three days, making their total almost fifteen feet since winter began.

Mary Sue slogged through waist-high drifts to reach the barn, where the ewe was in labor. Unfortunately, the animal had a prolapsed uterus, threatening both the ewe and her unborn lamb. She quickly called the vet, who was snowed in, but talked her through the procedure and they saved both animals.

"The Lord is faithful to help us through the hard times," she reminded. With snowdrifts "eight or ten feet high," Chief Wagoner and another fireman responded to a "Code 1," the most urgent of emergencies. He quickly radioed Sheriff Caudill and asked him to bring his four-wheel drive vehicle so they could get closer to the house. While the sheriff plowed his way to the scene, the firemen hiked across deep snow to the victim's house, more than thirty minutes distant. Unfortunately, the victim had already passed away. Easing him into a long basket-like Stokes stretcher, they fastened a sheet beneath the stretcher's underside, and sledded him to an ambulance waiting at the highway.

The storm finally passed, leaving several DOT vehicles buried beneath large drifts. In Sparta, snow had been scraped into the middle of Main Street, making a long pile so high a man on one sidewalk couldn't see over it to the other one.

With skies finally clearing overhead, Greg Wyatt drove his dad's big truck from Jane Taylor Mountain into town, crossing strangely dry patches blown clear of icy, beady snow that had drifted fencepost high ahead. By the time he got home, the front of the truck's radiator was a sheet of ice, and the vehicle's throttle linkage had frozen solid. The only way Greg could stop the truck was to turn off the ignition switch.

After everything was cleaned up, rebuilt and counted, the eastern "Storm of the Century" had caused almost $7 billion in damage and claimed nearly 300 lives.

Hmmm. Maybe our heat's not so bad after all.