I read your stories and it brings back many memories. I was brought up outside of Boston. When it snowed we shoveled it while it was still snowing. That is just the way it was. I still do it here in Oklahoma even when I know it will be gone in a few days. If I shovel it, the sun will dry the pavement out and it will not turn to glare ice. I have even used a lawn tractor to clear powered snow from my driveway and mail box; it works and the stuff was a foot deep with drifts to two feet.
First encounter with plain state weather was technical school in Amarillo, Texas in 1960. The place was so flat they would watch you go AWOL for three days and send out a jeep to pick you up when you reached the horizon. What they called trees was brush back home. I was there from October to May. Standing in formation in the freezing wind was no joy.
So I was real happy that my first duty station was Tucson, Arizona. Snow started at the 10,000 foot level in the mountains where it belonged. If I wanted to see snow I could drive up in the mountains to see; yup, that's snow. Then the Air Force sent me on temporary duty to Alaska - 180 days - twice in three years, both times February to May. I was lucky, the first time was Fairbanks and the coldest it got was 32 below. The week before I got there it was 68 below. Out of 36 engines on the 6 alert bombers, two started. Because of that, at 20 degree above we had to put heaters on the airplane engines. As it got colder we had to heat the wheel wells, and then the cockpit. I spent many a night and day doing that.
The power units to start the airplanes were parked in the alert barn where we lived When the klaxon sounded we would crank the units in the barn and tow them to the airplanes. Our pick-up trucks had chains and two 55 drums of sand on racks in the back. The thing that amazed me was if a plow left a ridge it was like hitting a concrete curb. When I hit it, I flipped the sand drums off the racks. One of the guys tore the front end off a power unit. I frost-bit my fingers there and to this day the tips turn white and hard when they get cold.
We had to sweep snow off the wings. If you got too far down the wing you lost it. The first thing to do was throw the broom as far as we could so we would not land on. It did not matter after that, you were going over. I can still remember my finger nails squealing on the wing as I slide down. How far you dropped depended on where you were on the wing. Close to the fuselage it was about 12 feet. If it was heavy snow, you would land in a puff of white. If it wasn.t you would land with a thump on packed snow.
In Fairbanks we were parked on over a foot of packed snow. If we burned or dug a hole in it with the engines we had to pull the airplanes clear and they would scrape snow down to the pavement with a bevel back to the packed snow. The other surprise was when it started to melt. We were shoveling in t-shirts to keep the alert barn from flooding and the maintenance officer jumped us because it was only 36 degrees. I guess we were winterized. The second tour was to Anchorage. They always plowed to the pavement but I experienced my first white out there. We were driving down a taxiway. I looked behind us and our tracks looked like a snake path.
My next duty station was Omaha, Nebraska. I do not think the wind every stopped blowing. I owed a VW bus there and in the wind it was like driving a 55 gallon drum through a bowl of jelly. I could not get past the bow wave of a Freightliner. When the wind was over 50, there was one hill going to work and I would lose RPM and have to down shift repeatedly. I traded it in for a new 65 Mustang.
We flew airborne command post and you could set your watch by the 8 a.m., 4 p.m. and midnight take-offs no matter what the weather was. Deicing airplanes from a cherry-picker in 40 plus mph winds could get real testy and we would get soaked with it. However, it never really snowed heavy there. We had one storm in four years that kept us from launching. When my airplane took off at midnight in a heavy snow, its landing lights were just a white ball moving through the night. I did not see the airplane for a week as it landed with problems in Louisiana at Barksdale. Barksdale flew our morning mission but we launched the 4 p.m. mission from Offutt.
The Mustang was parked outside in the drifting snow. I had come home just after mid-night. When I cranked it in the morning, I heard a cat scream, a thump as it hit the hood, and a flash of orange as it came out of the wheel well. That cat always had a hook in its tail after that.
Next base was Plattsburgh, New York. What can I say, Aa? It was 18 miles from the Canadian border, 60 miles south of Montreal. When I got the assignment, my co-workers told me that base housing had a door on the second floor with no stairs, that was the winter door. I was relieved to find out they were kidding but they were not far from wrong. On the flight line, snow blowers would build banks that were twenty or more feet high (one year there was still low remnants in June!) I made the mistake of driving a step-van under a snow blower and he buried me in nothing flat. I got chewed out for that dumb move. They called me in during one storm and they sent a 17 ton tow tractor to pick me up. Another time I went to work in a snow plow. I lived on base and we were required to clear our walks and driveways. When we shoveled snow there we always dug a notch in the bank so the plow would not push all the snow into the driveway. That worked fine until the plow came the other way.
One night I came on swing-shift and I had 8 tows as it was too dangerous in the day time. The ramp was a patch of glare ice and they figured it would be frozen solid by night. It was a beautiful night, 32 below, full moon with a huge ice halo and no wind. It was the first time I ever wore a face shield. The first two tows were out of the hangars. There was a slight slope up from the hangars and we hooked two 17 ton Euclid tractors together and we were crawling a chain link at a time. If the wheels spun we would have to stop and back down as the chains would dig a hole in the concrete. We were supposed to walk in front of the tow (to keep the speed down). After the first one, I sat on the front fender next to the warm engine.
Next place was Vietnam. I never understood their reasoning but we had to reactivate the cold weather oil-dilution systems on the propeller engines.
Next, I spent four years in Fort Worth. The big problem there was ice storms. People there were crazy. They would hit the ice on the bridges and slam on the brakes. Then they would screech to a stop on the dry pavement beyond just as the semi behind them hit the ice on the bridge. There seemed to be at least one major accident every storm.
From Fort Worth, I caught a hardship tour in Hawaii. I had to see snow in pictures although it did snow on the mountains in Maui and the Big Island. It did snow in Okinawa but not often and never deep.
My finally tour was Phoenix. I had to laugh at Cave Creek's "Bring it on" as it seldom snowed there and if it did it was light and did not last long. Cannot say that about Northern Arizona. I drove to the Grand Canyon one winter and the road had been cleared by a snow blower. In several places the trough was over 10 feet deep. Northern Arizona is the only place I have seen a train snow blower in operation. That is neat.
I retired in Fort Worth but then I was offered a job in southern Italy (Brindisi, below Bari on the Adriatic coast) monitoring a U.S. Navy helicopter overhaul contract in an Italian aircraft factory. Snow there was like Texas but nasty in the mountains.
When I was in Italy, a tornado hit our Fort Worth office and they moved to Dallas. I hate Dallas and traffic is crazy so I elected to return to Oklahoma City. I had no intension of staying but it is cheap living. Gas in the city was $1.55 the other day. We bought a place in the country in 2007 and have been there ever since.
When I lived in Fort Worth I would go back to see my father. After he retired he worked a small farm in North Berwick, Maine and later, Bennington, Vermont. However, any time I was there and they predicted snow I would run. I have had my fill of snow. My southern wife loves snow but she has never lived in it. I am tempted to send her to Boston for a winter.
I have probably said way too much but I hope it was entertaining. Thank you for putting up with me and all my questions. Every one has been very helpful.
Richard
