The Blizzard
The Blizzard
Oltenița lies at the south-western edge of the Bărăgan Plain. The town’s geographical position makes its winters sometimes harsh and unforgiving. The Bărăgan Plain stretches across the south-east of Romania, and in winter, when atmospheric blockages settle over the Atlantic, central or northern Europe, the cold air from the Russian Plain advances rapidly, bringing extremely low temperatures. Sometimes the thermometer drops to –23 °C at night and –15 °C during the day. And if, at the same time, a Mediterranean depression moves northward, its center reaching northern or north-eastern Bulgaria at just the right moment, the two air masses couple — giving birth to some of the most powerful blizzards on Earth. These blizzards — the feared crivăț — can last three or even four days: days of heavy snowfall driven by winds blowing 80–100 km/h. In the 1990s we had at least one or two such blizzards every winter, but the most memorable of all came at the beginning of March 1993. I was nine years old and had already experienced a few storms by then. I was obsessed with the phenomenon. I used to sit and talk with my grandmother about it all the time, while she complained about the cold, about how the animals suffered, about how people could barely move around — and how I, being just a child, couldn’t possibly understand such things. I listened, puzzled, unable to grasp how anyone could dislike such a wonder, such a spectacle, such a gift from God — the blizzard itself.
It was 28 February 1993, and in the evening, after the news on Romanian Television (the only channel back then), a woman presented the weather bulletin. With a gentle voice, like a primary-school teacher’s, she began to deliver the forecast. My grandmother and I were sitting in front of the TV, at the table, as usual, while my older brother, Cristi, was still out with his friends — he was five years older than me. That wouldn’t save him from being scolded by grandma later, for coming home late again. While I was stuffing a sponge cake into my mouth and my grandmother was sipping her tea, the map of Romania appeared on the screen — but now the map looked a little different in graphics from what I had seen before. The map no longer showed a few little cloud icons with three flakes under each, scattered sparsely across the country or just here and there. Instead, the entire south of Romania was covered in snowflakes. Many flakes. One next to another. All the while the weather presenter said the map looked different because a special weather episode was coming — one rarely seen at this time of year, in recent decades. My grandmother nearly dropped her teacup and threw me a look as if I had hit her twenty-liter jar of pickles with a ball.
“Are you happy?”
I almost laughed with joy, but I didn’t want to wake up with a stick on my back. So I kept nibbling my sponge cake and watched the TV, smiling only a little so as not to annoy her more. The weather presenter continued: three consecutive days of heavy blizzard were coming, she said, depositing nearly a meter of snow, with drifts of 1.5–2 m where the wind blew hardest. After the bulletin ended silence. I was grinning from ear to ear, waiting for the wonder, while my grandmother was already making plans for the days ahead. She thought about the birds, how much food to leave them in case we couldn’t get to them, how much bread to buy, to put the snow shovels by the door, and bringing wood next to the entrance so we wouldn’t run out of fire and warmth.
1 March 1993 — There was a bustle in Oltenița. From the first hour of the morning people were doing their shopping. Snow-clearing machines appeared around town, ready for action. But there was no great panic — everyone prepared as best they could so they wouldn’t run out of supplies if the access roads closed because of the snow. At school the teacher told us we wouldn’t come this week. Four unexpected days of holiday. I got home from school around two. Grandmother had already stocked the storeroom with chicken feed, placed the shovels by the front door, and bought enough bread for at least three days, plus flour so she could bake if the store bread didn’t arrive. Cristi was still at school. Evening fell and a cold wind was beginning to blow from the north-east. At the corner of our house, where the new joined the old, we had a lamp. It was placed strategically: it lit the pump area and the front of the house, where we had another lamp lighting the yard entrance. I was so impatient when it snowed that I would always go outside to catch the first flakes, every time it snowed — whether it began with rain that later turned to sleet and then snow, or whether it snowed straight away. This time, however, it was going to snow right away: the chance of initial rain was higher only along the coast. From eight till ten pm I went out every five–ten minutes to stare at the lit lamp, my hand held up to it to feel for the first flakes. Nothing. Around ten o’clock I told my grandmother I’d go out again before bed to check if it was snowing. Each time she sighed when I went out. She would say I wasn’t behaving properly. I pull on my coat, put on my boots, pull the hat over my head and switch on the outside light. I go out, hold my hand up to the lamp and stand for a few seconds. And I smile. I see very small flakes streaming past the lamp, from the gate toward the back of the yard. I feel happiness flood my whole body. I put my other hand out and stay a few more minutes… the flakes multiply and grow larger. After a few minutes I no longer need to hold my hand by the lamp — it is already snowing in earnest. I walk to the gate and look at the streetlamp to the right of our yard, toward Bulevardul Mărășești. I stand where the corner of the neighbor’s house shields the lamp’s glare and watch waves of snow driven by an ever-stronger wind. I step into the street and glance toward the north end of the road; the lamps there are growing dimmer through the falling snow. At that moment I spot Cristi running in from town. He runs in. I hear grandma scolding him for being late again and then silence. Around 10:30 pm she remembers that I am outside, sticks her head out the door and calls. I obey and go inside. I go to bed thinking of the snow that will be waiting for me when I wake up.
2 March 1993 — I woke up at seven in the morning, eyes straight to the window. The neighbors’ house to our right was covered with a white layer of snow, and the branches of the trees in our yard were swaying wildly in all directions with each gust, bending westward. A loud whistling filled the air. Cristi was still asleep, and grandmother was outside. I went to the door and looked through the window to see where she was, and spotted her through the falling flakes, coming from the chicken yard. She was walking briskly, for the wind was blowing quite hard and the snowflakes were tiny and dense, and when they hit your face, it felt as if a thousand needles were pricking your skin. She saw me at the window and came to the door. She stepped inside and told me to get dressed and come help her — “since you like snow so much.” I could hardly wait. I grabbed my clothes from the wardrobe and dressed quickly: thin trousers, thick ones on top, an undershirt, a T-shirt, a sweater and another pullover. I didn’t go out before eating something. I sat at the table, and she brought me hot tea, bread, margarine and jam. I devoured everything in a few minutes, pulled on my coat and went out into the yard with grandma. She had been up since five in the morning, sweeping the snow every ten or twenty minutes so it wouldn’t pile up. But it was in vain — the wind kept bringing it back. Now it was my turn to sweep. The snowfall was intensifying. I could barely see the chicken yard from halfway across. Grandma went once more to feed them and give them water, then went back inside. I stayed out and played with the puppies. We had two small dogs, Ralph and Gilda, only a few months old. Grandma had already prepared a warm spot for them in the summer kitchen, which was part of the old house. That winter, the summer kitchen was also our winter kitchen, since the new one inside the house was still under renovation. So she had already lit the fire there, to keep it warm while she worked.
Outside, I ran with the dogs, who were overjoyed by the snow. They ran among the flakes, slipped, and barked. I laughed. From time to time, I ran to the gate and looked down the street to see if any of my friends had come out, but there wasn’t a soul outside. The far end of the street, toward School No. 2, couldn’t even be seen anymore. And you couldn’t look that way for more than two or three seconds — the wind would blow all the snow right into your eyes. Finally, I went back inside and sat by the stove. Cristi was bundled up in bed, not even wanting to look out the window. After I’d warmed up, I jumped from the bed straight to the window. I stayed there for almost an hour, watching how the snow layer grew before my eyes. It was magical. Like a fairy tale. Meanwhile, Mom called from Bucharest, where she was with Cezar, our little brother. They wanted to see how we were, if we were safe. It had already been announced that all roads and the railway to Oltenița were blocked. We all talked to her, one by one. That evening we went out again with grandma to clear the snow. By now, the layer was already up to our knees — quite a lot for just one day of snow. This time all three of us went out. Cristi and I started shovelling from the chicken yard to make a path to the birds, while grandma worked toward the pump and the gate. After we finished in the yard, we went out to the street. The snow was falling so heavily that we could barely see the house across the road. I had a smaller, lighter shovel, but I was moving fast. It took us thirty minutes to clear the sidewalk, which was much wider than the yard paths. The wind was even stronger out on the street, where it had open space to run. It was already dark, and the streetlights glowed. Outside, many neighbours were doing the same thing — making sure the snow wouldn’t pile too high. Everyone had shovels, brooms, warm clothes. It was an incredibly pleasant feeling to see everyone outside at that hour, working together through the blizzard.
It was also a feeling of safety — one that has completely disappeared today.
3 March 1993 — Early in the morning I jumped out of bed again and went straight to the door. Grandmother was in the kitchen. It wasn’t snowing as hard anymore, but the snow outside had piled almost up to my waist. I dressed quickly and went out. I pushed the outer door with effort (we had two doors at the entrance: the inner one, very solid, with glass panes covering half of it, and the outer one, on the other side of the threshold — not as sturdy, with smaller windows only in its upper part). When you stepped outside, there was another little concrete platform, half a meter wide and a meter long. The snow pressed against the door, forming a drift at least half a meter high, packed by the wind, right in front of the entrance, beneath the small roof overhang. Normally, that entrance was protected — but as the meteorologists had warned, this time things were different. Grandma had managed only to clear a narrow path between the house and the kitchen, whose door stood a meter away on the right-hand wall. I took the shovel and started clearing snow, but it was harder now — the layer was much thicker. Cristi woke up and joined me, and the two of us started shoveling together. Luckily, the snow had paused for a while; only the wind kept blowing, though not as fiercely. It took us almost an hour to clear just enough snow to reach the pump and the chicken yard. We had to lift the shovels higher and higher, because the snow walls formed on both sides of the paths were already almost a meter tall — up to my chest. We took a break, during which I called Mom again to tell her how beautiful it was in Oltenița. In the middle of my story, a strong hand landed on the side of my head — I hadn’t noticed Grandma next to me. Mom could hear her scolding me in the background and started laughing. Anyway. We ate and got back to work, this time in front of the house and by the gate. The snow ploughs could no longer enter the street, and the drift looked like something out of a fairy tale. When you looked down the street, it was as if you were staring at an ocean in the middle of a storm. It took us almost half a day to clear all the snow. Walking now along the dug-out paths, it felt like being in the trenches. The wind blew snow from the high walls on either side, forming a fine powdery roof under which I ran, half bent, imagining I was in some fantastic fairy tale where I had to dodge the snow the wind hurled at me. The dogs ran after me. On TV they were announcing that the snow would return — another 24 hours of heavy snowfall ahead. At midnight I was still outside with Grandma and Cristi, shoveling. And for the first time, a feeling of fear crept in. Especially when I saw that in the yard the snow walls were above my waist — and in places where the wind had piled high up to my chest. Grandma crossed herself every five minutes, while Cristi ran back into the house. I asked her if it would ever stop. I knew about the winter of her youth, when the snow had been so deep that they had to dig tunnels to get out of the house (the famous winter of 1954). She told me calmly that it would stop soon — not to worry. She didn’t scold me this time; she saw I was a little frightened. We finished another round of shovelling — the last one — in front of the gate, out on the street. We both stood there trying to look beyond the ridges of snow made by our shovels, but between the falling flakes and the wind sculpting the landscape into mountain-like shapes, it was hard to see anything at all. We picked up our shovels and started back toward the house. Even on the path we’d just cleared, the snow already reached our ankles. Inside, I changed, washed, and went straight to bed — tired and a little scared.
4 March 1993 — At dawn I woke up and looked out the window, expecting to see that the snow had stopped. But all I saw was a full blizzard. The snowfall wasn’t as heavy, but still enough to keep the layer growing. We went out to shovel again. We were exhausted. The dogs stayed in the kitchen. By now we couldn’t even tell if what was flying through the air was new snow or the old snow whipped up by the wind. Grandma came back from the chickens — she had given them warm water and mixed bran. On the third day of the blizzard, the cold was much sharper, cutting through everything. Grandma kept feeding wood into the stove, never letting the fire die. After lunch we stepped outside, and the sight was staggering. I walked between snow walls taller than myself. I had to look up to see the wind carrying the snow above my head without touching me. It was magical. I had forgotten fear entirely. I was enchanted by what I saw — as were Grandma and Cristi. At the gate, in front of the yards where no one had cleared the snow, the drifts were as tall as the fences. Images etched so deeply that I can still see them now. The small roof above the house entrance was covered in a layer of snow so thick it blocked the attic door. It was over a meter high. We had to bring out the ladder and clear the snow with shovels so the supporting beam wouldn’t collapse. We did the same with the old house’s roof — climbing the ladder and clearing from the lower edge upward as far as we could reach. We couldn’t climb onto the roof itself. Then came the shed. Toward evening, the snow finally stopped. Finally. The wind calmed too. The landscape was like something from a fairy tale. The snow reached halfway up the windows, and the icicles hanging from the roofs were 30 to 40 centimetres long, almost touching the drifts below. The silence, mixed with the cold and the glow of the snow reflecting the night light, was so strange and so beautiful while you didn’t want to go back inside.
But eventually we did, returning to the warmth, worn out and ready for sleep.
The blizzard episode from the beginning of the spring of 1993 remains one of the most significant in the history of meteorological records in Romania — and a defining moment of my childhood.
