It had been nearly a week since the 81-year-old left his mountain home in Big Pine, California, to drive back to his wife in Nevada, but he hadn’t arrived.
Finally, after six days, the former Nasa employee was rescued from the snow, where he had survived on some biscotti and a couple of croissants.
“The whole thing was just a miracle,” his grandson told the BBC.
“It was hard for us to think a man could do so much with his life, create such a legacy, and then get trapped in his car and die of hypothermia.”
Jerry Jouret was caught by the winter storms that have pummelled California this month, dropping 3ft (90cm) of snow in the northern part of the state where his car got trapped.
At least 13 deaths have been reported in the state amid the storms. Authorities say only one can be conclusively tied to the weather, and eight others are being investigated as possibly linked to the cold snap.
On 24 February, Jerry had been driving for 30 minutes after leaving Big Pine on what was supposed to be a four-hour trip back to his family home in Nevada, when he accidentally ended up on a smaller road and his SUV got stuck in a snowbank.
[Growing up in the Appalachians, in wintertime I always had a blanket, flashlight, lighter, and gloves at a minimum in the backseat of my car, from that first frost of the fall. ~ Beege]
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