Remembering when

A request for snow in David Futrelle’s 1989 letter to Santa didn’t seem likely in Onslow County until Mother Nature stepped in with a little help.

A coastal storm, an area of low pressure, moved up from Florida and stalled far enough off the coast to allow a cold front from the North to settle over the area. The precipitation was snow, and the low temperatures were record-breaking.

Wilmington recorded a temperature of zero on Christmas morning and overnight lows in Jacksonville and other areas fell below zero.

Onslow County and eastern North Carolina had a White Christmas.

“It’s a pretty rare event,” said meteorologist Reid Hawkins of the National Weather Service office in Wilmington.

Snow isn’t in the forecast for this year, but the memories of 1989 are vivid for many area residents.

As much as 16 inches of snow blanketed Onslow and the surrounding area, and for the Futrelle household in Richlands the snowflakes carried a little Christmas magic.

Conni Futrelle said her son, who was 7 at the time, had drawn snowmen and seen snow in all the holiday television shows but had never experienced it first-hand. So he asked Santa for it.

“He said it made him believe in Santa a few more years,” recalls Futrelle, who still has that letter from Santa.

According to information from the National Weather Service office in Newport, which didn’t exist at the time of the storm, the snowfall totals for Dec. 22-25, 1989 were highest along the coast.

Greenville recorded 5 inches, New Bern saw close to 9 inches and Trenton had just above 10 inches. Along the coast the totals reached double digits, with the Wilmington area seeing around 15 inches and 16.5 inches recorded at the Hoffman Forest area of Onslow County.

Those are the official numbers. Unofficially, there are reports from residents that are higher.

Atlantic Beach Police Chief Allen Smith was still with the Highway Patrol at the time of the storm and found himself snowed in and unable to leave his home off N.C. 24 in Carteret County.

“A snow bank was up to the roofline of my garage and covered my patrol car. All you could see was the antenna,” Smith said.

He measured 18 inches of snowfall at the lowest point in his yard and was stranded for at least two days, a bit frustrated that he couldn’t get out to help.

The good thing, Smith said, was many others were in the same situation, and those who did venture out couldn’t go too far too fast. Most of the incidents he heard about were cars sliding off the road into ditches.

“The snow was so heavy and the roads were so slick, no one could get enough speed up to do much damage,” he said.

Warren Wethington, Onslow County maintenance engineer with the N.C. Department of Transportation, was working as an engineer technician and made the trip from Jacksonville to Wilmington to pick up rain gear, gloves and other supplies. The trip took him all day.

With help from other divisions around the state, DOT crews worked nonstop to “push and plow,” a task not normally required along the coast.

As he made his trek to Wilmington, Wethington saw his share of cars slipping and sliding in Hampstead, and he recalls the snow piled six and eight-feet high along each side of the path cleared along U.S. 17.

“U.S. 17 looked like a bobsled run; it looked like you were driving in a trench,” he said.

While the storm brought the community to a standstill, it’s not the inconvenience that sticks in the mind of everyone.

Rebecca Cylc of Jacksonville remembers waking to a silence on Christmas Day, an eerie kind of feeling that something was not quite right.

It proved to be a beautiful blanket of pure, white snow, and the makings of a family memory, she said.

They were living in Hubert at the time and after digging the car out of the snow they braved the trip down N.C. 24 to get to her mother’s house. It meant dealing with icy, slippery roads but Cylc said she’d do it all again for the memory of watching her oldest child, who was 18 months old at the time, enjoying the snow.

“Seeing his first White Christmas through his eyes was fantastic, something I’ll cherish forever,” she said.

Clare Chatman of Jacksonville says her family was home for Christmas and the storm left her snowed in with the best company. “All the children and the grandchildren were here; it was wonderful,” she said.

And as they enjoyed the snow snug at home, her grandson, who was stationed at Fort Bragg at the time, had a four-wheel drive truck that he and a friend used to carry people to places they couldn’t otherwise get to.

“They were the only ones who could get out,” she recalled.

Four-wheel-drive vehicles were a popular find during the snow, and the Woleslagle family had that and more.

“I think we were the only ones with a snow shovel,” laughs Debbie Woleslagle, who said they had just been stationed at Marine Corps Air Station New River and come down from Virginia, where they had snow often.

That snow shovel helped her on more than one occasion as they dug Christmas gifts out of the shed and carried on with their Christmas Eve party.

It was a challenge getting through the snow, but area residents remember the creativity that emerged as boats became sleighs and snow drifts turned to waterfront ski slopes.

Woleslagle said one of her favorite memories of the storm is of a neighbor who pulled out his bass boat and towed it over the snow with his truck to give the neighborhood kids “sleigh rides.”

Joey McClure of Clawson’s Restaurant along Front Street in Beaufort remembers business owners down the street who broke out their snow skis. A photograph he still has captured the “Ski Beaufort” sign planted in a snow drift.

“We went from water skis and ‘No Wake Zone’ signs to ‘Ski Beaufort,’” McClure said.

It has been 20 years since that White Christmas, and Wethington said he’s sure of one thing: “That’s one that everybody remembers,” he said.

Contact Jannette Pippin at 910-382-2557 or jpippin@freedomenc.com.