For much of the day on January 28, 1951, temperatures in Westmoreland hovered in the mid-50s.  It was a Sunday and when churchgoers made their way to worship, many of them carried umbrellas due to the threat of inclement weather.  As the day progressed, a steady rain began to fall from the gray skies and the air began to cool.  That night, Clyde and Eugene Keen hosted Charlie and Ethel Creasy for dinner and an evening of cards and coffee to follow.  Their plans were cut short when the rain turned to sleet and Charlie and Ethel feared they might not be able to get to their house at the top of a hill on their farm just west of Westmoreland.  

By midnight, the temperature was below freezing.  The Monday that followed saw a combination of sleet, freezing rain, and snow lightly fall throughout the day.  By the end of the day, nearly an inch of the mixture covered the ground.  

No precipitation fell on Tuesday, January 30th though the temperature remained cold.  This lull in the winter weather was short-lived owing to the passage of another cold front that brought a complex pattern of weather over the midSouth. That night, the temperature dropped to 18 degrees.

Wednesday, January 31st dawned a miserably cold day.  In an unusual weather pattern, snow was falling from high in the atmosphere but on its way to earth, passed through an area 5,000 feet above the ground’s surface where temperatures were significantly above freezing, causing the snow to melt into rain as it passed through this level.  As the precipitation approached the ground level, it became a mixture of sleet and rain and when it finally reached the ground, it froze.  The day’s high temperature only reached the upper 20s and by sunset, three to four inches of ice covered everything.  

Through the night, the freezing rain turned completely to snow so that by mid-day on Thursday, February 1st, the area was buried under nine inches of ice and snow.  The combination of deep snow on top of a solid base of ice made travel virtually impossible.  Power lines snapped under the weight of the ice cutting off electricity and communications to nearly everyone.  

And then, to add insult to injury, Mother Nature really took a turn for the worse. 

It might be called a Polar Vortex today but local residents at the time simply knew it turned colder than what most anyone alive had experienced here.  As the light of day faded away, the temperature had dropped to -1 and the descent had only just begun.  At Nashville’s Berry Field, the thermometer read a stunning -13 degrees at daybreak on Friday, February 2nd.  Bowling Green recorded 20 degrees below zero at 4:45 am.  The morning low in the northern part of Sumner County was somewhere in between.  

Families crawled from beneath quilts and blankets that Friday morning to feed livestock, to feed their pets, or to feed themselves.  Schools were closed and so were the majority of businesses.  Travel by car was impossible.  At airports, flights were grounded, while at train stations, locomotives were idle.  Everything was impassable.  

With Tri-County Electric Cooperative, electricity had come to the area in 1938 and many families had gradually come to rely on it solely as their source of heat in the winter.  Some still used heating oil or wood and coal.  Regardless of the source of heat, most found themselves shivering with the loss of power, or unable to replenish dwindling supplies of the alternative fuel sources.  

With the loss of electrical power, folks had to revert back to their lives before electricity.  To the children, it was all a novelty; no school, sledding, hanging out with friends or family lucky enough to still have power, and telling stories by candlelight in the darkness of night.  Children likened the images of snow and ice glistening in the sunlight to a fairy tale paradise.  

Adults, on the other hand, faced the reality of a near-total disruption of their normal lives.  

Trees were down everywhere, and when not completely uprooted or snapped at the trunk, limbs covered the ground beneath them.  In particular, accounts at the time noted the damage done to cedar, pine, and hackberry trees.  On the farms, water sources for livestock were frozen solid and many farmers lost cattle or horses that slipped on the ice and suffered broken legs.  Silas Creasy recounted having to get down on all fours and crawling up a hill while returning from one of the creeks with buckets of water.  It was the only way for him to make it up the hill.  

As the frigid cold lingered, little if any melting occurred, and residents were forced to make do with what they had to survive.  Large icicles were broken off bluffs or the roofs of structures and then melted over a fire to provide water for drinking or the boiling of food.  Others reported having used axes to chop off chunks of ice from nearby creeks for the same purposes.  

As the long hours passed into days, folks began to suffer cabin fever in their isolation and with it, frustration grew with the perceived lack of progress in returning to normal.  J. W. Creasy made his way to Silas Creasy’s house and the two decided to attempt a trip to Lafayette in an effort to persuade Tri-County to get the electricity back on along Highway 52 west of Westmoreland.  Their wives didn’t endorse the idea, but the two headstrong men made the trek anyway.  The going was much more difficult than they had imagined.  As they continued to slowly make their way eastward, near Siloam they encountered a man frantically waving for help.  The man reported that his pregnant wife had gone into labor unexpectedly and that his car was stuck in the ice.  The man pleaded for Silas and J. W. to take his wife to her doctor in Lafayette.  The three men quickly loaded the unfortunate lady into the backseat of the car and prepared to leave.  Noticing the expectant father failed to get in the car with them, they were informed there were other small children in the house who could not be left alone.  Necessity called for the Creasys to take the lady on to Lafayette without her husband.  

It was now obvious the party of three had to quicken their pace in their attempt to reach Lafayette.  They travelled a few miles further when they began to encounter significant drifts of snow in the road.  To their horror, the car became stuck.  They had brought along shovels for use if such a situation were to occur but came to the realization that once free at this point, they would likely get stuck again as the drifts covered the highway for a great distance.  They soon heard an approaching noise from the west and were greatly relieved when a tractor or backhoe with a bucket heading east came into view.  Stopping the driver, they quickly explained their desperate situation and persuaded the reluctant driver to transport the lady to Lafayette.  Without hesitation, they loaded the lady into the bucket of the backhoe and made her as comfortable as possible, wrapping her in blankets, and sent them on their way.  Silas and J. W. extracted their car from the snow drift, and, having experienced enough adventure, decided to return to Westmoreland.  

Ann Caldwell was nine years old at the time and remembered the electric meter being ripped from the side of their house as a result of the falling lines and trees. Though the family stayed warm through the ordeal, having a wood cook stove in the kitchen and a coal burning stove in the living room, she did recall her parents moving their freezer to the back porch and opening it, choosing to allow neighbors to help themselves of its contents rather than risk the possibility of losing it to spoilage.  

Sixteen-year old Betty Troutt recalled neighbors who had natural gas running out of their fuel source and having to temporarily move in with others to stay warm.  Neighbors relying on each other for food or shelter was a common occurrence throughout the event.  

Allen Haynes from nearby Portland was a boy at the time but was forced to face a most unusual reality.  His great grandmother, Sally Ann Forbes, passed away during the storm.  Unable to remove the body to the funeral home due to the condition of the roads, his grandparents kept the body of Ms. Forbes in their own icy house until conditions improved and the funeral could be held.  

The thaw didn’t begin until the 5th of February and with it came bursting water pipes and the start of cleanup.  It would be days before many had their power restored but once able to do so, travel on the roads resumed and the towns and cities witnessed traffic jams bigger than any that had been seen before.  

Fortunately, ice storms are rare events, but when they do occur, the damage to trees and powerlines can be immense.  The Ice Storm of 1951 affected an area from northern Louisiana to West Virginia along a narrow swath roughly 100 miles wide.  Damage was estimated to have exceeded $100 million, equivalent to 1.2 billion dollars today, with 500 people injured in the storm and 25 individuals dying from causes attributed to the storm.  The most significant devastation took place in Tennessee and Kentucky.  Sumner County and its residents found themselves in the heart of the Ice Storm of 1951.

For further information on the Ice Storm of 1951, visit the attached links.

THE WINTER OF AUGHT 51 | Historic Nashville