News

Gentle snow causes few problems

By Bill Moss, Published: January 11, 2025

After Helene it was clear every storm threat to follow would seem like a piker.

If we needed a natural, out of the ordinary event to remind us that nature can be beautiful without being harmful then this 2-4 inches of snow filled the bill: No power outages in Henderson, Transylvania and Polk counties, just 56 in Buncombe. Statewide, only 10,171 Duke Energy customers were without power. (Context: By Saturday after Helene arrived here 99 percent of Henderson County customers were in the dark.) A couple of crashes but no fatalities, no injuries or harrowing rescues.

"It's been fairly uneventful," Jimmy Brissie, the county's emergency management director, said Saturday morning. "When I went to bed last night (and checked power outages) I was like 'oh my God,' and when I got up this morning there were still none. We're getting fortunate so far."

Although Brissie warns that a forecast of high winds could potentially cause some outages later today, the threat that a layer of ice would send evergreen limbs crashing onto power lines did not materialize.

"I would say primary roads will be clearly fairly quickly," he said. "Secondary roads I'm sure will have some snow for a little while. It's a good opportunity for folks to just stay home and enjoy it this time."

The snow broke our record-breaking string of days with no snow dating back to March 12, 2022, when we got just over a quarter inch, and is the first (somewhat) big snow since we got 11 inches on Jan. 16 of that year.

Good for sledding, good for kids, good for snowcream, good for dogs, good for bird watching, good for the soul. Thank you, Mother Nature.