PRINCETON — Much of the snow that blanketed southern West Virginia Friday night, idled interstates and left thousands without electricity or a way to reach home finally started to melt under this week’s sun. But the tales of the “blizzard of ‘09” will linger long after the actual snow becomes water under the bridge.

After days of dire weather predictions, the first flakes flew shortly after midday Friday, but the showers fell quickly and settled heavily on a road full of motorists trying to beat the storm home. Road conditions deteriorated faster than highway crews could handle their tasks, and the result was total gridlock on Interstates 77 and 81, U.S. 460, U.S. 52 and even West Virginia Route 20.

While the adventure and the frustration of being stranded for hours on end weighed heavily on everyone involved, the harrowing ordeals were eased by the dedication of emergency workers, the compassion of strangers and sheer thankfulness that most everyone survived the storm only a little worse for the wear.

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Bryan Kahle, a special agent for Norfolk Southern Railway, left his Mercer County home Friday morning, expecting a rather short day. Heading for a proceeding in Charleston’s magistrate court, the veteran law enforcement officer expected to be on his way home by 4 p.m. and face a relatively uneventful ride home on the West Virginia Turnpike.

What he didn’t know at the time was that his wife, Nissa, and family friends were planning a surprise birthday party for him.

He got out of the capital city on time and examined the weather conditions.

“It was just raining. I wasn’t bad at all,” Kahle said.

He got on the interstate and made it to the vicinity of the Pax exit, and road conditions became much worse. There, snow, jack-knifed tractor-trailers and stranded motorists blocked the southbound lanes completely.

“We were there for about six hours,” Kahle said.

Meanwhile, back at home, the snow dowsed the birthday party, frightening friends into staying home, but Nissa Kahle made sure her husband got to experience part of the evening.

“She kept texting me pictures of the decorations at home,” he said.

After he finally started moving again at Pax, Kahle hoped he’d be able to make it home, but deeper snow and more wrecked vehicles again closed the road just south of the Harper Road exit.

“The Turnpike maintenance crews were top notch. They tried their best to get to us,” he said.

But, privy to the information relayed on his police scanner, Kahle knew there were many, many vehicles stuck heading south and not nearly enough wreckers or tow trucks to do the job.

“They were doing all they could do, but this area just doesn’t have the number of wreckers to take care of something like that,” he said.

As with many people who faced adversity over the weekend, Kahle said he also experienced kindness. He met a family traveling from Cleveland, Ohio.

“They were super nice. I hadn’t packed any supplies that morning, and they gave me some peanut butter crackers. They were on their way to Florida, and I bet they wished they’d left a day earlier,” he said.

Kahle finally got home about 2 p.m. Saturday, roughly 20 hours later than he would have expected, but he was thankful to be safe and very grateful to find fresh water and electricity at home.

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Meanwhile, back in Princeton, Emergency Management Director Tim Farley said fire departments and emergency workers did their best to keep the roads open and people as safe as possible. Workers from East River and Bluestone Valley volunteer fire departments, along with Princeton Fire Department, brought their service vehicles out to assist stranded motorists.

“We just went from car to car, asking people if they wanted to go to a shelter. Some said they’d like to stay and try to get home if they could, but others said they’d like to go someplace safe and warm,” Farley said.

The firefighters transported stranded motorists to the Salvation Army headquarters on Princeton Avenue, where Capt. Kelly Goldfarb said this week her husband, Capt. Aaron Goldfarb, worked through the storm to make sure there was emergency shelter and food on hand for people in need.

“Disaster work is something we do a lot, and that the Salvation Army is known for. We’re always ready to help like that,” Goldfarb said.

While she did not stay at the shelter overnight Friday, Goldfarb said her husband had shared the story of a woman traveling through from North Carolina. She arrived at the Salvation Army shelter after midnight, but volunteers were still happy to offer her a warm meal and a place to weather the storm.

“My husband said that even though he was tired and had his own family to be concerned about, it was such a blessing to be able to help people,” Goldfarb said.

In addition to the 48 people who spent the night at the Salvation Army’s worship center, the Army also prepared approximately 60 meals for motorists who sought a safe haven inside a hotel that hadn’t even opened Friday.

At about 6 p.m., Microtel property owner Khalid Durrani said motorists began asking if his hotel had a vacancy. In fact, at the time, it had nothing but vacancies. The rooms didn’t contain beds, and a shipment of towels, sheets and other linens had only arrived Friday.

Luckily, Durrani said he had just received fire marshal’s approval on a portion of the building, and the businessman welcomed his first hotel guests before the property was even completely furnished. When families with small children and parents traveling alone with babies arrived in need of assistance, Durrani knew he had an answer.

With the help of a security worker Durrani identified as Ronnie, he began finding a place for people to stay.

As Ronnie unpacked the sheets, pillows and more, Durrani situated them in the hotel gym, in the lobby, in his office and even around the pool.

“His leg was hurting, but Ronnie was doing everything,” Durrani said. “We were only two people, but God gave us the strength to do what we needed to do.”

The Salvation Army provided dinner for the first Microtel guests, and Durrani said he later was able to serve fresh coffee and donuts from Wal-Mart for snacks.

When he and Ronnie became exhausted, a police officer from Canada who sought refuge from the storm stepped up and took over the reins.

“She came to our rescue and put us in bed for five hours so we could get some rest,” Durrani said. “She said, ‘Relax, I will help you, and I will keep everything under control.’”

At other times, Durrani said others volunteered to collect trash and help clean up the scene. While Friday didn’t present the opening he had expected, he welcomed the chance to support the community and future customers with gusto.

“It was a grand opening for me. There cannot be a better grand opening,” he said.

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By 6 a.m., most of the major roads not blocked by vehicles were passable again, and Farley said emergency crews began assisting motorists back to their cars to resume trips home. Most of the Microtel visitors had their vehicles with them, so they were also free to leave Saturday morning.

At that time, Lisa Arnold, of Bluefield, hoped she was on her way home, but she wasn’t sure she’d make it all the way. She spent the night in her car just outside of Wytheville.

An employee of a cable company with an office in Roanoke, Va., Arnold is familiar with a commute longer than most people would accept. Her drive last Friday blew her last record out of the water.

She left her Roanoke office just after 2 p.m. Friday, when she noticed the first stray flakes fluttering outside her window. As she made her way toward Bluefield, however, she noticed the weather condition grew severe quickly.

“It went from spitting a few flakes to a blizzard in just a few minutes,” she said.

By 7:30 p.m., Arnold was five miles outside Wytheville on the Roanoke side, and traffic came to a complete standstill.

“I sat there until 7 a.m. and never moved again,” she said.

Luckily, Arnold had learned from an ice storm she’d been trapped in a few years ago, an instance in which she’d found herself “bored out of my brain.”

She made it a point to carry a small survival kit, including Chex mix snacks, water, energy drinks, a blanket and a few odds and ends to make life easier should she ever find herself stuck in the car again. Friday, she was able to break into that kit and keep herself relatively comfortable. Plus, a big bag of books on CD helped her pass the time.

Because she only had half a tank of gas when she stopped and was aware of the danger of breathing too much carbon monoxide, Arnold turned her car off as much as possible.

“My sweet husband, Greg, would call me every hour and say, ‘OK, it’s time to turn the car on and warm everything up for a few minutes’,”she said. “I guess he was afraid I might either leave it on and run out of gas or fall asleep and never wake up again. So, he kept a check on me.”

Greg Arnold also posted regular updates on Lisa’s progress on Facebook, which then prompted their common online friends to help keep her company.

“I had people texting me until 1 a.m., and that was nice, too,” she said.

While many of the motorists surrounding Arnold were tractor-trailer drivers who were able to climb into the back of their cabs and sleep through the storm, there was one motorist nearby who was traveling alone except for her poodles. She and Arnold checked on each other regularly throughout the night.

Finally, traffic started moving again just after 7 a.m. Arnold made a pit stop for fuel in Wytheveille and couldn’t get going again. That’s when three men joined her effort and pushed her car to help her move forward.

From there, she continued forward progress. She was within two blocks of her Bluefield home when the car got hopelessly stuck in the snow. That’s when she decided it was time to leave the car and finally get home.

Arnold was happy to be home, to see her family again and enjoy the conveniences of a home not on wheels, but she was also thankful she’d been as well prepared as she was.

“Something like that really makes you appreciate a lot of things,” she said. “There were people in a whole lot worse shape than me.”

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Everywhere, everyone who survived the storm had a story of some kind, and most had a silver lining of sorts.

At the West Virginia Visitors Center on U.S. 460, Manager Valerie Hendricks said her staff was snowed in Saturday and couldn’t open their office. But, the maintenance staff charged with keeping the restrooms clean and accessible stayed on the job throughout the snow, insuring travelers who could get there would have a safe place to stop.

Don Zeigler, of ERA Advantage Realty, set out from his Princeton office to his Bluefield home at 3:30 p.m. Three hours later and three close encounters with icy roads and drifting snow later, Zeigler made it home. While he said most motorists were simply trying to keep themselves safe, he commended the fire and police crews he saw for responding in full force.

Greg Puckett, executive director of Community Connections, Inc., went to Elkins late last week to play with the West Virginia Blazers and the Appalachian Rapids, hoping he would make it home to Athens in time to enjoy the snow with his little ones, Lauren and Joe. After the game, the team headed for Bridgeport on their way through Virginia Beach for games, while Puckett stayed behind to head home the next day.

Both he and the team got snowed in, but Puckett said he was happy the kids had fun playing with the grandparents anyway.

Lisa Fenton struggled through the finicky electrical service that flickered throughout the storm, but she enjoyed watching her dog play in the messy white stuff. In fact, the canine enjoyed it so much she videoed him digging for thrown snowballs — amid even more snow — for her Facebook page.

Tera Dillow’s van got stuck just short of home, but she was thankful her father rode to the rescue, taking her first home and then to the hospital, where nurses in the labor and delivery unit have to work, no matter the weather.

Heather Bailey-Fisher gave up on trying to get home to Athens, when she learned of the massive traffic tie-ups on Route 20. She spent an early holiday weekend with the parents in Princeton, and since Monday was a snow day for Mercer County students and teachers alike, she had extra time to make her way back home and dig the car out.

And, Bob Besenyei, who doesn’t care for cold weather, was warmed by the compassion he saw on the road over the weekend.

“I saw humanity as strangers tirelessly helped strangers, whether by pushing, pulling or digging. The generosity of good Samaritans was seen at all hours. Doors were open to stranded travelers and family reunions were abundant,” he said. “It was unity in adversity. It almost makes me want to see it snow year around.”

— Contact Tammie Toler at ttoler@ptonline.net.