Last week was an interesting week for most of us warm-weather loving southerners.

Almost certainly, everyone in the area probably has a story related to last week’s visiting sleet, snow and ice.

For those of you who read the newspaper’s print edition, you might be interested to know a little about how the newspaper managed to deal with the snow and ice.

Sleet peppering the window at approximately 4 a.m. Tuesday woke me. Once the cause of the noise registered in my brain, I rolled over and thought, “Today should be interesting.”

A few hours later, as daylight filtered through the clouds, just how interesting started becoming clear. Sleet was piling up fast on every surface in sight.

Within another hour or two the sleet turned to snow, which began packing in and around the tiny frozen pellets.

From inside a warm house, such a scene was actually beautiful. A fresh blanket of snow always makes the area look clean, covering up any unsightly dead grass or leaves.

Sipping a cup of coffee, I thought to myself, “God’s going to remind us who is in charge today.”

Driving in snow used to scare me a bit, but I got over that after several years of living in Ohio.

My time as a “yankee” may have given me a few advantages, perhaps, as I headed to the office. First and foremost, I purchased a four-wheel drive Jeep in Ohio after my two-wheel drive SUV lightly slipped into a couple of ditches during similar weather.

So before backing out of the driveway, I shifted into 4WD and began easing to work. My Ohio ditch experiences had a way of tempering my normal desire to get places quickly. My goal for the day was to get to and from work without hitting anything. To accomplish that required driving painfully slow and being extremely methodical about starting, stopping and turning.

Getting to work was just part of the challenge for our staff.

Once there, our newsroom folks had to begin braving the nasty weather again in an effort to take photos and find out about the weather’s impact.

Fortunately, we managed to get the news reported with no damage to property or injury to our staff members.

Ben Hillyer and Brittney Lohmiller captured some beautiful images of just how bad the roads were.

Readers began sending in their own photos, mostly of children having fun in the snow.

Other newsroom employees worked hard to find out where the bad roads were and what was being done to the bridge, and they quickly worked to get the news out through our website and social media outlets.

Our website had the highest traffic in more than a year during the frozen mess.

That’s a testament to how many of you turn to us during times of uncertainty to find out the latest news. We’re honored and humbled by the trust you place in us.

Wednesday’s newspaper was truly a team effort. Newsroom workers lent a hand in the pressroom to help insert sections into the newspapers, since all but three of the workers typically charged with that task were unable to make it to the office.

Even delivery of the newspapers was a study in cooperation between our staff and the route carriers. The whole project reminded me of just how much we all depend upon each other and just how little in this life we can control.

As I headed for home that night, I shifted my 10-year-old Jeep into gear and said, “It’s just me and you now, God.”

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.