StarBulletin.com

Snow falls in 49 states


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POSTED: Saturday, February 13, 2010

Forget red and blue—color America white. There was snow on the ground in 49 states yesterday. Hawaii was the holdout.

It was the United States of Snow, thanks to an unusual combination of weather patterns that dusted the U.S., including the skyscrapers of Dallas, the peach trees of Atlanta and the Florida Panhandle.

More than two-thirds of the nation's land mass had snow on the ground when the day dawned, and then it snowed ever so slightly in Florida to make it 49 states out of 50.

At the same time, those weird weather forces are turning Canada's Winter Olympics into the bring-your-own-snow games.

Who's the Great White North now?

“;I'm calling it the upside-down winter,”; said David Robinson, head of the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Snow paralyzed and fascinated the Deep South yesterday. Snowball fights broke out at Southern Mississippi University, snow delayed flights at the busy Atlanta airport, and Louisiana hardware stores ran out of snow supplies. Andalusia, Ala., shut down its streets because of snow. And yet Portland, Maine, where snow is usually a given, had to cancel its winter festival for lack of the stuff.

Weather geeks turned their eyes to Hawaii. In that tropical paradise, where a ski club strangely exists, observers were looking closely at the islands' mountain peaks to see whether they could find a trace of white to make it a rare 50-for-50 states with snow. But there was no snow in sight.

Hawaii's 13,800-foot Mauna Kea volcano, which often gets snow much of the year at its higher elevations, is the most likely place in the 50th state to have snow, but there “;is nothing right now,”; said research meteorologist Tiziana Cherubini at the Mauna Kea Weather Center. It has been a few weeks since there has been snow in the mountains, and none is in the forecast, ruining a perfect 50-for-50, she said.

The idea of 50 states with snow is so strange that the federal office that collects weather statistics does not keep track of that number and cannot say whether it has ever happened. The office cannot even say whether 49 out of 50 has ever taken place before.

Snow experts at the Global Snow Lab were combing their records but said it could be days before they find out whether there has ever been a 50-for-50 snow day. Their best suspect—Jan. 19, 1977—had snow in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, but then Robinson looked for snow in South Carolina and could not find any.

As of early yesterday morning, 67.1 percent of the U.S. had snow on the ground, with the average depth a healthy 8 inches. Normally, about 40 or 50 percent of the U.S. has snow cover this time of year, Robinson said.

It snowed for only 10 minutes in Century, Fla., just north of Pensacola, barely enough to scrape a few snowballs from the hood of a truck. But that was enough for 6-year-old Kaleb Pace.

“;I've only ever seen snow on TV till now,”; Kaleb said, smiling.

Last month ranked No. 8 among all months for North American snow cover, with more than 7.03 million square miles of white.

And stay tuned. The weather pattern is in a snow rut.