The Great Escape

It's been a strange winter in Central New York. We have escaped many of the crippling winter storms as they have amazingly dumped on the states south of us. ... Until the only day in a Central New York winter that I was to get a on a plane and head south for a few days of leisure.

I awoke to a beautiful landscape of freshly fallen snow. Surely three to four inches of white beauty would not cause my flight to be canceled!

Tuning in to the local news, I was greeted by reports of school closing after school closing after school closing. Any school I was aware of in all directions from our home was closed. A preemptive move, I reassured myself. A precautionary course of action in light of how snowfall south of us closed towns down. Surely this, in and of itself, was not enough to cause my flight to be canceled!

At work comments leaned to the negative, presumptions being that my flight could easily be canceled. Still, as I looked out the window I saw snow falling, but not a blizzard. My mantra continued: This was not enough to cause my flight to be canceled!

Leaving work an hour early to allow time for poor road conditions was the first slight admission to a possible problem. Still, I told myself, this was a precautionary action. I continued on with my plans on the premise that my flight was not yet canceled!

At the airport, waiting for my flight, the weather was beginning to deteriorate. The falling snow was turning to blizzard conditions. My husband faced poor driving conditions on his trip home.

Though my flight continued to stay listed as 'on time' on the flight board, flights around me were on, and suddenly off. If the weather would only continue to remain stable until we were up in the air flying high above the storm!

The weather conditions remained stable. My flight left on time with extra passengers on board, those passengers whose flights had been canceled and were looking for a different route towards home. Little did I know that I was getting out on one of the last flights before the worst of the storm dumped close to two feet of snow on central New York!

Ultimately arriving in sunny Florida I was greeted the next morning by news and photos from my family of two feet of snow in our driveway and of practically buried cars; of schools closed, not for precautionary measures, but because of roads still needing to be cleared of the massive snowfall; and of news reports of people being told to stay home and not to go to work.

Smiling from my sunny, snowless location, I thanked the Lord for holding off the storm until my flight left, for making my "Sister Weekend" a reality and allowing me to escape one of the year's worst winter storms!