By: Alaina Valdespino, Staff Writer & Photographer
Growing up I used to ask Santa Clause every year for snow. I had been watching Christmas movies for as long as I could remember and all I wanted was to have a snowball fight with my siblings. It was a silly wish seeing as it doesn’t even snow this far south, being in San Antonio, Texas; so, no surprise when it never came true.
Flash forward to this year, February 14-18, my long-lost childhood dream not only came true, but it came to be a 4-day long reality that I can honestly say was nothing like I imagined it to be.
When I used to think about what a snow day in Texas would be like, I imagined watching the snowfall while sitting on the porch drinking a warm cup of coffee with cinnamon rolls in the oven. It would be beautiful, serene, and when I got too cold (which as a Texan would be pretty fast) I could go inside my warm, heated home, bundle up with some blankets, and watch a movie. The first few hours of the unprecedented February winter storm were just that. I stayed up all night with my siblings, played in the snow, made hot chocolate, and got to experience something that was quite frankly unheard of. I mean, 6 inches of snow and counting in San Antonio, Texas. It was enough to completely shut down the city. Businesses, grocery stores, even schools both online and in person all stayed closed that morning due to the insane weather and a lack of resources needed to clear the roads.
photo by Alaina Valdespino
photo by Alaina Valdespino
As the first 24 hours progressed, businesses stayed closed, and they did for the remainder of the week. Phone connections grew weaker and before we knew it, we had no cell service or internet connection. Then, that Monday evening, the rolling blackouts began. For those of you that don’t know what a rolling blackout is (at the time, I didn’t either), it is a way in which power is rotated between zones or neighborhoods in order to conserve the power grid so it doesn’t overload. However, for my family that rotation included many consecutive hours without power and gaining power only a few times a day and in intervals of less than 5 minutes at a time. For perspective, my family had a total of about an hour and a half of power the entire first day and continued to get less and less as the week progressed.
To some, the idea of being snowed in with no power might seem fun, thrilling even, almost like an apocalypse movie. But for my family, it was a mix of emotions. Playing chess and board games to pass the time was actually pretty fun. We even got around to building a life size snowman. However, trying to keep warm in a home that’s internal temperature was dropping almost as fast as the snow was falling was terrifying.
Because we had no internet connection, we couldn’t attend zoom classes or work, so to pass the time, we talked a lot more, and in those few days, we grew closer as a family. This power crisis taught us all a lot of skills that we never anticipated learning. Skills ranging from how to toast bread over a fire to how to insulate a home with pillows and sofa pieces. These among others became skills of survival for my family and I, and as drastic as that sounds, that was the gravity of the situation. We were faced with a storm that we never anticipated, yet we were able to make the most of it and despite some of the fear surrounding the situation, we managed to learn some new skills and get closer throughout the process.