Generally speaking, the weather around these parts varied somewhere between hot-and-humid nine months out of the year to three months of inevitable "it's-so-hot" comparisons that usually involved hell, animals, and/or body parts. (If you don't know these, I'll let you go Google yourself an education.)
All this sticky, sweaty heat meant on the few, rare days that it did "snow" (read: mostly ice) it was a huge deal.
It just didn't happen nearly as often as it does today.
The biggest snow, other than the freak 1895 20 inch event, before the South Belt began its move from rice paddies to homes, was the 4 inches of 1960.
From the ABC files:
Luckily, home movies were coming on strong by then and a few people have shared their Houston snow videos online:
The one below includes both 1960 and 1973. Other than "trace" amounts (read: someone saw three ice flakes hit the sidewalk) it was a thirteen year span between anything resembling snow on the ground. That's an entire childhood!
The first time any kids living in the Kirkmont and Sagemont neighborhoods would see snow was that one really cold winter in 1973 when there were an astonishing three days of recordable snow.
Many thanks to Barry Fuller and Rick Wright for their contributions from the Snow of '73!
Barry's pictures are from 10902 Sagemeadow
Enough snow for not one, but TWO snow people!
Rick's pics:
And thank you Jerry for the home video! (Sagewillow and Hall)
The 1978 trace recording was farther north than where we lived, as I recall.
But in 1980, when I was 10 and could actually remember it, we got real, live snow.
The Ice Tree featured in the South Belt Leader:
From my own files and memories of 1980, I was ten and in the sixth grade at Easthaven Baptist School. The ice rolled in and we were let out early from school -- an absolute miracle. My friend Christina who was in my class (of 12 kids!) lived over in Kirkmont but her parents couldn't get off work early to pick her up, so she came to my house. We spent the afternoon marveling at the great snow of 1980. (Since I've lived in Colorado for a good while now, these memories are especially sweet and charming.)
My grandfather had a green thumb and kept a greenhouse filled with tropical plants year-round. I'm sure it looked a little odd to the folks on the street, wintering with plastic wrapped on the front of the house each year.
This may have been the only time I ever needed my fuzzy white coat.
Gathering the "snow" from the base of the trees and rose garden was the best we could do to make a snowball.
In between freezing, we'd watching the actual white stuff fall from the sky and drink hot chocolate. It was magical.
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