No-no-no-no! This was not in the guidebook. This isn’t supposed to happen in Tuscany, but I kid you not. Snow made an imposing presence in Tuscany in the winter of 2004, one of the worst winters in Italy in recent years.
My day went like this. It was around noon on the last Thursday in January when I left my village, Montebenichi, to make the half-hour drive to Montevarchi for routine errands. There was snow falling, but nothing threatening. Usually when it snows here, an inch or two at most may accumulate, provide a temporary picturesque winter effect on the countryside, and then melt away over the course of the day. So I didn’t think much about the weather and set out that day.
Grocery shopping was the last item on my agenda, which I finished around 2:30pm. I was surprised to see that the snow was sticking to the streets as I exited the supermarket garage. Cars were lined up in the direction of the highway. It wasn’t unusual to see a traffic jam on this road leading to the highway. Normally, it would be due to an accident at one of the roundabouts between the supermarket and the highway. It couldn’t have been due to the snow because it doesn’t snow that much in Tuscany. . . . It just doesn’t.
Luckily, I was headed in the opposite direction so I crossed through the cars lined up and was on my way. But I didn’t get very far to notice the first reason to start worrying. Montevarchi is completely flat. However, I came to a small bridge that crosses over a canal. There was a short line of cars before the bridge, not because of a traffic jam, but because each car would wait to see if the car ahead of it would make it up the bridge. Each of our cars had no trouble driving up the bridge so long as we moved slowly.
I made my way across town to the S69, the main road leading out of the southeast corner of Montevarchi. Traffic was bumper to bumper. Everyone was leaving work early in the hope of arriving home before the roads became impossible to drive. I could not understand everyone’s panicking like this because it does not snow enough here for anyone to panic. . . . It just doesn’t.
I was in no mood to sit through this so I headed for Mercatale by way of the south road out of Montevarchi. There was not as much traffic going this way but the risk was that this route was whether I would be able to drive over a steep hill. The first stretch of hill was no problem. I just kept my speed at 10km/hr and guided my car up the winding road.
A kilometer before reaching the pinnacle of this hill I met an obstacle. Just as I was approaching Rendola, both sides of the road were lined with people standing alongside their cars. Their relatively cheerful expressions confused me. I couldn’t tell whether they gave up trying to drive in these conditions or if they were just enjoying this unusual event that put some variety into their normal routine. Perhaps they were saying, “We usually don’t get this much snow in Tuscany.”
As I continued up the hill, I noticed that there were some drivers still trying to press on but were either stuck in the ditch next to Rendola’s dormant vineyard or slowly sliding toward it. Several men were trying to help others get their cars back on the road.
I was managing just fine through this activity until I saw a man in his jeep trying to gun his way out of the ditch. He wasn’t paying attention to my approach and even though I had the right of way, I was afraid that his wheels would grip onto something allowing him to bullet into my lane just as I got in front of him. So reluctantly, I had to brake. My momentum having been broken, now I started to slide toward the ditch right next to this guy in the jeep. As I slid toward the ditch, part of my brain was thinking, “What in the hell am I going to do if I end up in that ditch?” The other part of my brain was thinking, “I shouldn’t have to be thinking what the other part of my brain is thinking because, dammit, it’s not supposed to snow like this in Tuscany!”
Luckily, the group of men who were pushing cars back onto the road saw what was happening to me and they sprang into action. They told the jeep guy to stop and then they ran behind my car to give me a push. Once I saw that they were in position, I slowly gave the car some gas. I started to slide so I stopped. “Piano! Piano!” (Slowly! Slowly!) the men shouted at me. I gave the car some gas again, but even slower this time. Just beyond the verge of stalling, my car began to move forward. I gave the car just a little more gas and I got my momentum back. Soon I left this crowd behind me and made my way to the pinnacle of this hill. As long as I drove slowly, I had no problem easing my way down into Mercatale.
From Mercatale, I had little trouble navigating the roads onto Bucine, Capannole, and Ambra even though the roads were getting very bad at this point. After I passed Pietraviva, I could see Montebenichi up in the hills to my right. I was almost home.
However. . . . It was just a little too soon to be optimistic. As I took the turn off the main road to go to Montebenichi, I noticed a big difference in the amount of accumulation of snow. On the main road, you could at least see bits of the road’s pavement. But on the winding narrow road climbing up to Montebenichi, I saw nothing but a thick layer packed with snow. A treacherous blanket of snow was ready to swallow any set of tires that tried to approach it. My two attempts to drive even 50 yards up the hill were both failures. My tires wouldn’t grip. I was lucky that I was able to turn around and drive back to the bottom of the road.
Now I had a dilemma. It was 5:00pm and beginning to get dark. One option was to leave my car at the bottom of the hill and start walking. I wasn’t crazy about that idea because I was in no mood to deal with a herd of wild boars that occasionally made an appearance on this road at night. Luckily, as I was thinking this over, I saw a familiar car slowly approaching this road with chains on its tires. It was my next door neighbors, Jim and Fiona, who were on their way back to Montebenichi. They recognized immediately what my situation was so they told me to jump in. Even with chains on Jim’s tires, the climb was slow going. While we felt confident that Jim’s car was equipped to make it up to the village, we all were aware that there were still a few treacherous spots along the road to pass. At a couple of points there were steep drops off the sides of the road. If the car slid too far toward the cliff, down a steep cliff we would have gone, and worrying about how I was going to retrieve my car would no longer have been necessary. Fortunately, Jim skillfully steered the car safely up to our village.
What a project it was just trying to get home that day. I was lucky. I saw on the news that many others had much more of an ordeal in their attempts to get home. Thousands of people were trapped on the A1 between Bologna and Florence for seven hours before the snow trucks were able to clear the way. Others were stuck on the Superstrada between Florence and Siena for four hours.
After I went into my apartment, I had to see how much snow accumulated. I went out to my terrace with a tape measure, which indicated nine inches had fallen. Nine inches! I asked several people when was the last time that happened in Tuscany. I was told that the last time there was enough snow at one time to cause commuting problems was back in 1996, but even then only about four inches had accumulated. The last time there was anywhere near nine inches was back in 1987. So it was no wonder that this weather caused so much surprise for everyone. It’s not supposed to snow in Tuscany!
