Ten inches of snow fell on New Orleans earlier this week, a staggering total for a city on the Gulf Coast. The last time the Big Easy received this much snow was 1895. Yes, the same year Babe Ruth, J. Edgar Hoover and Buster Keaton were born. A winter storm passing through a city without snowplows created a landscape that just looked awe-inspiring on camera. There are uncleared highways for as far as the eye can see.
Drone footage, shared by KOVA, recorded scenes of Interstate 10 flowing through the Louisiana metropolis. The freeway is just a sprawling ribbon of white fluff from the air. While there were visible tracks on the snow-covered freeways, the roadways were utterly devoid of traffic. I could only spot a pickup truck and a side-by-side, two vehicles built for this environment. Residents were smart enough to simply stay home.
The brief clip ended with an unintentional foreshadowing shot of the Superdome, the stadium for the upcoming Super Bowl. New Orleans can’t afford to wait for the snow to melt away on its own. The city is paying Northerners to bring their snowplows down South to liberate drivers from their homes, CBS News reports. New Orleans paid an Indiana company $500 per hour for every truck clearing roads. While cold-weather states have had a difficult time recruiting drivers, I’m sure this Bayou Blizzard payday appealed to many plow pushers.