By Allan Jamail
Thursday, December 7, 2017 — If you were up late you may have been one of the thousands of Houstonians seeing the first bits of snowflakes falling.
I was one of those up late because my wife Linda was baking cookies and Baklava (a Lebanese pastry) for the holiday party the next day. It was a little before midnight when I glanced at the security camera monitor and saw the first snowflakes fall.
As dawn came the snow continued to fall at my Jacinto City home. At 73 I’m not ashamed to say I still get excited to see this rarity in Harris County. Measuring the depth on my car hood I was surprised to see 2 inches of snow fell since midnight.
As parents awakened their kids for school I saw them coming outside to play in the snow before leaving for school. Since the last snow fall was eight years ago many of those kids were seeing their first snow. Snowmen and snow angels were made, and rooftops and the hoods of vehicles were blanketed with snow.
I researched the last snowfall in Houston to learn it was December 4, 2009, and one inch fell then. One year prior on December 10, Houston saw 1.4 inches. Since 1895, it has snowed 35 times in Houston — the worst of those being in1895 on Valentine’s Day when the city was hit with 20 inches of snow.