IMAGES | Record snowfall and sub-zero temperatures brought Louisville to a halt 25 years ago

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Twenty-five years ago Thursday, people in Kentuckiana awoke to a record snowfall, on top of a layer of ice.

They would not forget the deep freeze of the days ahead.

The snow that fell was a record, almost 16 inches in Louisville and almost two feet in surrounding counties. People were trapped in vehicles throughout Louisville and the state of Kentucky.

Kentucky Gov. Brereton Jones closed the interstates for a day because of the trucks and cars blocking the roads and because crews with the few working plows couldn’t keep up with the snow.

Thousands lost heat and power. Many couldn’t leave their homes because the conditions were too treacherous.

Temperatures later dipped to more than 20 degrees below zero, some of the coldest lows ever in Louisville. Schools were out for two weeks or longer.

People helped one another. Volunteers with four-wheel-drive vehicles took doctors and nurses to hospitals. They scrambled to what was then Southeast Christian Church in Hikes Point to shovel the large parking lot with only about 30 minutes’ notice to make room for a medical helicopter to help a 3-year-old girl eventually get to a hospital in Nebraska.

Michelle Schmitt and her family had waited two years for a liver transplant. They had no more time to wait. The helicopter ambulance flew her to a plane at the airport, and she received her liver.

The snow and ice eventually melted. Local and state government learned to take better care of snow plows and beef up plans to clear the roads. And people still talk of their shared experience of the “Storm of ’94,” 25 years later.

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