Once you recover from the snow blindness − that’s the real deal, am I right? − you see some strange things in the snow and its aftermath. Snowmen on already-white quartz sand, boogie boards as snow sleds and troopers blocking interstate entrances and exits in some mini-dystopian scene cutting off communities.
Pensacola partners and colleagues William “Billy” Howell and Elizabeth Linn, both avid photographers, went driving around town Thursday looking for some of those strange scenes to shoot. Few were stranger than the empty Escambia Bay Bridge, which connects communities, and connects one part of Florida with the western United States.
“We said, ‘Let’s take photos of an apocalyptic interstate,’ something we thought we would never see happen,” Howell said of the barren bridge. He and Linn parked near the Dairy Queen on Scenic Highway overlooking the bridge. The bridge had been closed since Tuesday evening because of the record snow, and Linn and Howell thought it would be a perfect spot to get that “apocalyptic” shot.
It was about 2:15 p.m.
They started walking to the sidewalk overpass on Scenic Highway to take photos of the deserted 2.6-mile bridge below, snow pushed to the interstate’s side barriers.
Then a sound.
“I think that’s cars,” Linn recalled. “You could hear the sound, and it was picking up pace.”
Then, the pair saw a strange sight. On the westbound portion of the bridge, a convoy was a ‘coming, led by three Florida Highway Patrol cars with flashing blue lights, and, for some reason, a silver four-door car. (Florida Department of Transportation maybe?)
Following was a long line of big rigs that had been waiting for the bridge to open for two days, finally bringing needed cargo across the Southeast.
The Florida Department of Transportation shut down I- 10 from the Alabama state line to Okaloosa County on Tuesday night as 10 inches of snow turned to ice when temperatures fell to 18 degrees. By Wednesday, they had closed it all the way to Tallahassee.
For nearly 48 hours, the snow and ice would thaw then freeze again as the sun warmed the ground for several precious hours each day, only to have temperatures plummet once the sun went down.
For nearly two days, much of the Panhandle was cut off as freezing ice and subsequent crashes closed down alternative routes.
But just as suddenly and without fanfare as it closed, it opened again.
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The truck convoy “was interspersed with cars,” Howell said. “They had just then let them all across. It was a rare moment.”
The photos show the long line of vehicles moving west, while the east-bound lanes were eerily empty, that snow clinging at the edge. Still there was one photo Howell and Linn missed, he said.
“We never did get a photo of the empty bridge.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: I-10 Florida open photographed on accident
