Sledding on boogie boards, ice hockey on Canal Street: The Gulf Coast embraces a rare snow day
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — When the sun rose over the Sunshine State on Wednesday, palm trees were dusted with snow, waves crashed on icy beaches, and overjoyed Floridians grabbed whatever would slide and headed for the closest hill.
At a park a few blocks from the state capitol in Tallahassee, the young and the young at heart raced down the snow-covered slopes on improvised sleds.
They were set free from school and work not because of another hurricane, but a different meteorological marvel — a historic snowstorm that for many along the Gulf Coast could be a once-in-a-lifetime event.
And they embraced it as only Southerners could.
“Being from Florida, we have a boogie board and then we also have a skim board,” Michael Holmes, 35, said of his kids’ makeshift sledding gear. “So far the skim board is working out really, really well.”
“Gotta get creative in Florida!” added his wife Alicia Holmes, 35.
The Holmes set their alarms early Wednesday morning to make sure their 9-year-old daughter Layla and 12-year-old son Rawley could make the most of a rare Southern snow day.
More than 700 milesaway on North Carolina’s barrier islands, children sledded down unusually snow-covered sand dunes near where the Wright Brothers first took flight.
And in New Orleans, the city known for letting the good times roll woke up buried under 10 inches of snow — and rolled with it.
Revelers decorated a snowman with flowing locks of Spanish moss, which drips from the Gulf Coast's beloved live oak trees. They pulled on shrimping boots and grabbed inflatable pool toys, yoga mats and metal cookie sheets to speed down the levees that ring the Mississippi River. On Canal Street, one man donned his skates to practice his hockey moves on the ice-covered road.
Life-long New Orleanian James Braendel, 37, drew on his marketing background to launch a viral social media campaign encouraging snowball fights at different parks around the city.
Holed up beneath a cluster of oak trees, Braendel and his friends fended off a group of small children hunkered behind a snow fortress, while a dozen neighbors ranging from twenty-somethings to the elderly sniped each other.
“This is once-in-a-lifetime right here,” Braendel said. “In my mind, this is their permission slip: Let’s all be silly together and do what we do in New Orleans, which is play and forget about normal life for a second.”
The wintry snowscape even warmed the hearts of some Southern politicians, who waxed nostalgic about the rarity of the event.
“My kids, this is something they’ll remember 40 years from now,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a father of three.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry called the snowfall “magical.”
“Not every day you see snow in Louisiana,” Landry mused on social media. “I hope everyone is safe and warm at home with a big pot of gumbo.”
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