Story by ANDREW MATHER, Photo Editor—

The past couple of years have seen fairly mild winters. Temperatures have remained on the warmer side during the winter and there hasn’t been much snow. There have been a few snowstorms that yielded a couple inches on the ground, but nothing has come close to the amount we saw two years ago.

It has been called a few names, but the most well known are the Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon and Snow-M-G. What a week that was when the campus was hit. Three days of school cancelled in one week due to the amount of snow.

I can still remember what I did on those three days off. Most of my time was spent with my friends just hanging out in the dining halls for hours at a time, talking about whatever and eating as much as we possibly could. When I wasn’t in the dining hall I was exploring the snow-covered campus with my camera, getting into a snowball fight with about thirty other students on the quad, or the rec center rock wall.

I asked a couple people about their thoughts on the Snowpocalypse and their memories of the event.

Ashley Fairfield, a senior majoring in speech language pathology, remembers the storm for a unique reason. “The Snowpocalypse was the best snow day ever,” she said. “It marks the anniversary of when my boyfriend Tom Wangerin and I started dating. We rented the movie “Frozen” in honor of all the snow.”

JP Richardson, a senior majoring in Photography, also remembered a lot about the blizzard. “I remember the first night, walking through the hip-high snow to get a heating pad for a friend and eating Chinese food while studying for a test the next day unsure if it would take place,” Richardson said. “The next day I ate pizza with two friends. That’s the day the power went out because a snowplow truck ran into the electrical box. One resident even got stuck in the elevator and firefighters had to help her escape. An evacuation was planned from UCC to Ellis because there was no heat.”

The Snowpocalypse will remain one of my most vivid memories of my UCM career. I’ve experienced several snowstorms, but nothing quite like that one. With friends, snowball fights, power outages and no classes, who could forget such an experience?