Alabama Power retirees reflect on the ‘Storm of the Century’ – 30 years later
A blizzard to remember: the March 1993 walloped Alabama much of the east coast. (Bill Snow / Alabama News Center)
Alabamians have seen some storms in their day. But 30 years ago this month, the state was on the leading edge of a storm few people will ever forget.
It’s known as the “Storm of the Century” – which wasn’t what forecasters projected for Alabama.
“No one anticipated it,” said Robin Hurst, who was Alabama Power’s vice president of Power Delivery in 1993. Hurst retired in 2009.
“I had never seen anything quite like it,” said Don Boyd, who served as the company’s “manpower director” during the storm. Boyd also is retired.
“Looking back, I’d say it was mislabeled,” commented Hurst, who notes that from a power outage and damage perspective, and a human toll, Alabama has since seen much worse since then – from Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina in 2004 and 2005, to the devastating and deadly tornado outbreak of 2011.
“It was the blizzard of the century, no doubt,” Hurst said.
The storm first spun up in Texas and roared in to Alabama on March 12, 1993 – a Friday – taking a northeasterly path. By the time it wound down two days later, it had touched nearly half the U.S. population, all the way to northern Maine, according to the official account from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The storm caused some $5.5 billion in damages ($10.8 billion in 2021 dollars). Of the more than 340 weather and climate events with damages exceeding $1 billion since 1980, it remains the country’s second-most costly winter storm to date.
Freezing temperatures and downed trees posed major obstacles for Alabama Power crews following the blizzard of 1993. (Bill Snow / Alabama News Center)
In north and central Alabama, initial forecasts predicted a dusting of possibly up to 3 inches of snow in some spots. Ultimately, 12 to 18 inches of snow fell across central Alabama, and more in a few places. Walnut Grove in Etowah County was buried under 21 inches of snow, the National Weather Service reported.
The freezing precipitation was accompanied by howling winds of sustained 45-50 mph for 12 hours and gusts even higher, according to Alabama Power documents. Thermometers plunged while the skies lit up with freakish lightning followed by booms of thunder, which Boyd and Hurst distinctly remember as the company’s storm team quickly activated amid deteriorating conditions. Temperatures dropped as low as 2 degrees Fahrenheit, with wind chills closer to minus 10 degrees.
Boyd remembers spending Friday evening in a hotel in downtown Birmingham, so he could move quickly to the Storm Center, a few blocks away, if there was a need to begin storm operations.
“It began to snow and snow; I’d never seen anything quite like it. We saw lightning flashes and then the snow went horizontal – kind of like when you see rain go horizontal in a hurricane. It just kept blowing and blowing and blowing,” Boyd said.
The snow and frigid temperatures trapped Alabamians in their homes following the blizzard of ’93. (Bill Snow / Alabama News Center)
By the wee hours of Saturday morning, Boyd and his team decided it was time to activate the Storm Center. They piled in his car for the short ride to company headquarters.
“It was so cold, just frigid. It was snowing so hard you couldn’t tell the road from the sidewalk.”
Indeed, within blocks of the hotel, Boyd’s car stalled in a snow drift and couldn’t be pulled out, forcing the team to hoof it the rest of the way.
Overall, the March 1993 storm ranked as “Extreme” or a Category 5, on the Regional Snowfall Index for the Northeast, Southeast and Ohio Valley regions, NOAA later reported. Comparable to a Category 3 hurricane, the storm covered more than 550,000 square miles and affected nearly 120 million people. It still ranks as one of the worst snowstorms to impact the Northeast, Southeast and Ohio Valley.
During the height of the storm, snow was falling at rates of 2–3 inches per hour, according to the NOAA report, with as much as 56 inches reported on mountain peaks from Tennessee to West Virginia. Most of the central and southern Appalachians received at least 2 feet of snow, while wind-driven sleet fell along the East Coast. Central New Jersey reported 2.5 inches of sleet on top of 12 inches of snow, creating an “ice-cream sandwich effect,” the NOAA report said. Up to 6 inches of snow fell in the Florida Panhandle.
The widespread impact of the storm posed challenges for Alabama Power’s storm team, as it made initial requests for help from other utilities. During that Saturday, much of north and central Alabama was at a frozen standstill, Boyd said, “and everyone around us was snowed in.”
In fact, the storm “shut down almost every interstate from Atlanta northeastward as well as every major airport on the east coast at one time or another … causing the most weather-related flight cancellations in U.S. history,” NOAA reported. Nearly 10 million people and businesses lost power.
Hurst said one of the first utilities that agreed to send crews was Florida Power and Light (FP&L). A year earlier, Alabama Power had provided FP&L crucial support in the massive restoration required in South Florida following Hurricane Andrew. The special relationship built during that recovery made a big difference now that Alabama Power needed assistance, Hurst said.
Snow blanketed states from Alabama to Maine and even fell in the Florida panhandle. (NOAA)
In the end, with so many areas of the country affected, the company had to reach out to utilities as far away as Minnesota to help. The Minnesota teams were flown in and the company rented them trucks in Alabama so they could hit the ground running. At the peak, crews from 13 states were supporting Alabama Power personnel in the restoration efforts, working together in frigid conditions and icy terrain. In some cases, crews had to cut their way through roads piled with downed trees to begin restoring power. Several times during the recovery, company crews rescued elderly, snowbound customers from their homes, bringing them safely to nearby family or neighbors.
Meanwhile, it was all hands on deck across the company to support customers and the restoration work. Some Alabama Power customer service representatives stayed on the job and on the phone as long as 24 hours straight, sucking on cough drops to save their voices as they provided updates on restoration efforts.
At the company’s generating plants, personnel worked long shifts to ensure equipment didn’t freeze and thus disrupt the flow of electricity. Just one of the company’s 14 hydro plants went offline for a brief time because of downed transmission lines. None of the company’s fossil fuel plants was disrupted.
In all, more than 400,000 Alabama Power customers – 40%of the company’s total customer base in 1993 – lost power for some period of time. The biggest cause was thousands of fallen trees and snapped tree limbs that brought down power lines. Despite the multiple challenges, the company was able to restore power to 96% of customers affected by the storm in just six days.
At Alabama Power generating plants, teams put all tools to use to keep the lights on during and following the blizzard of ’93. (Phil Free / Alabama NewsCenter)
Hurst and Boyd said the experience and knowledge crews gained during Hurricane Andrew were put to use in helping speed restoration efforts following the blizzard. They included the benefits of setting up staging areas, where crews could be fed and housed, equipment stored and trucks parked and fueled to improve the efficiency of storm recovery operations. But there were also lessons learned from the blizzard, such as the need to establish a stronger, more formalized system of mutual assistance among the region’s utilities. That system is now long established.
Technology also has improved significantly, Hurst said. Today, utilities can pinpoint much faster the precise location of an electrical fault, and in some cases, make repairs remotely and automatically. In 1993, technology could roughly identify the location of an outage, often with the help of customers who called in to report it. But crews still had to “go look” and often manually check lines to find the precise spot where a repair was needed, Hurst said.
Boyd emphasized that the Storm Center’s focus was on the logistics of securing extra help, and then feeding, housing and procuring materials and supplies to support thousands of Alabama Power and out-of-state crews. The toughest work, he noted, took place elsewhere.
“I always said, the Storm Center did not set a single pole or pull up a single span of wire. The people in the field, they deserve all the credit,” Boyd said.
Indeed, Alabama Power crews are now often sought after by other utilities when help is needed, because of their years of experience working in all kinds of conditions and after all kinds of natural disasters – from blizzards and ice storms to hurricanes and tornadoes.
“You learn something from every storm,” Hurst said.
Scott Moore, Alabama Power senior vice president of Power Delivery, said, “Our customers depend on us to keep the power on, and our crews and support personnel work hard every day to be ready when they need us.
“Our team takes a lot of pride in providing an exceptional level of response, especially during severe weather events like the blizzard of ’93 and even more recently during the extreme cold over the 2022 holidays,” Moore added. “The craft, knowledge, skills and professionalism of our employees are consistently remarkable.
“The mutual assistance process has certainly matured since 1993, but because we have always committed to learning and growing from each experience, our response continues to lead the industry as a shining example of successful customer commitment and professional engagement,” Moore said. “The employees of Alabama Power will always shine brightly during storm challenges and I’m proud to serve alongside them.”
