Saturday, Dec. 26, 2009

Bob Bestler | A white Christmas at the beach

Editor's note: Twenty years ago, in 1989, the Myrtle Beach area was brought to a standstill by a freakish storm that dropped 14 inches just before Christmas. Columnist Bob Bestler recalls his experience with the worst Grand Strand snow storm in anyone's memory.

The snow began falling lightly, softly, beautifully, in the afternoon, two days before Christmas 1989.

Up north, the day would be a harbinger of a lovely white Christmas. Here, it was the nightmare before Christmas.

The forecast was for snow to fall for several hours along the coast, then taper off about 30 miles inland.

Like most Grand Strand businesses, Elaine and I closed our Barefoot Landing bookstore early so we could get home safely. Supermarket shelves were rapidly emptying as Grand Stranders stocked up before hunkering down.

Elaine and the two kids packed quickly and headed to Camden, where we had planned to celebrate Christmas with relatives.

As the assistant sports editor at The Sun News, I had a paper to put out. I would join them the next day.

By nightfall, the ground was covered by a shimmering white blanket; often through the night, we looked out an office window at the strange sight of snow. Still coming down. Getting deeper. Wow. How'll we get home? Will we get home?

By the time we put the paper to bed, we had maybe five or six inches. I was able to get to my car in the parking lot, then drove very carefully home.

I didn't know when it would end, so I parked a block away, on Main Street in North Myrtle Beach.

By morning, the snow had stopped - but not before it had dumped an astounding 14 inches, still the heaviest snowfall ever recorded in Myrtle Beach.

How freakish was it?

Normally, Myrtle Beach has a "snow event" every two years or so. A "snow event'' is generally defined as at least one-tenth of an inch. It is so imperceptible that the average annual snowfall for Myrtle Beach is officially zero.

In my 20 years here, we've had about two inches of snow a half-dozen times or less. None of it is memorable.

But on this day, as we still struggled to recover from the ravages of Hurricane Hugo three months earlier, the 14 inches was like the final blow of a wicked one-two punch.

What made it worse was the timing - Christmas Eve. I knew I didn't want to spend the holiday alone in a condo eating Campbell's soup. (Never mind that I still had shopping to do and that no stores would be open.)

So I found the warmest clothing I had and trudged into our winter wonderland to my car, climbing through huge snow drifts that were left everywhere.

The car was barely visible. Working without gloves, I brushed the snow off, enough to get in, start it and get the heater going.

Getting anywhere was out the question. As I sat there, pondering my options, a four-wheel Jeep and a friendly driver stopped to help.

He tied a rope to my car and pulled it out until I was safely in a tire track and headed toward U.S. 17.

There, a truck loaded with sand came by and I watched as workers furiously shoveled sand out onto the street. It was the closest thing we had to a snow plow.

Still relying on the tire tracks of braver souls, I headed over the Intracoastal Waterway bridge and onto S.C. 9.

I was meticulous about staying in the tracks, glancing just momentarily at the cars stalled and half buried along the highway. I knew if I veered off the tracks, I'd be joining them.

Just as had been forecast, the roads started clearing as I got away from the coast. By the time I got to Tabor City, N.C., the snow was gone. It looked a lot like the South Carolina I remembered from 24 hours earlier.

I drove on to Camden and, like a soldier home from the war, told everyone how bad it was. Even as I spoke, it was difficult to convey how much snow had fallen on our beachfront communities.

The thing is, after about three days, the Grand Strand would be back to normal, our bizarre white Christmas already fading into memory as we headed back to the golf courses and the malls on streets cleared by the sun, not the snow plow.