The 2004 White Christmas
The RGV got some snow in December 2017, but by late morning, early afternoon, the white stuff had already melted away.
The Christmas Eve snowfall of 2004, however, was far different — more snow, and it stayed on the ground for a longer period of time.
Magical, was how a lot of people described it.
Even if the snowfall had been planned, it couldn’t have worked out any better — that Christmas Eve, in Hidalgo County, right after the sun set, or close to it, the snow started to fall from Valley skies and just picked up steam through the midnight hour.
“Is that really snow falling outside?”
For people who had never traveled out of the Valley during winter months, and that counts as more than a few, the 2004 Christmas Even snowfall really did seem magical.
Here was how the U.S. Weather Service out of Brownsville described the experience 20 years ago:
“The Rio Grande Valley of Deep South Texas experienced one of its most memorable Christmas Holidays ever. A rare combination of weather events developed in late December that produced several inches of snowfall, which in itself is quite rare in this region,” the weather service said.
“However, to have snow fall on Christmas Eve and morning is a historical first according to the more than 150 years of weather data. This White Christmas is certainly one for the record books,” the service said.
Breaking a weather-related event that had withstood the passage of more than a century-and-a-half, well, it was a good time to be alive to witness the Christmas marvel.
The Cell-Phone Blessing
The biggest change over the past 20 years, one of them anyway, has been the rise of the smart phone, whether it’s Apple’s ubiquitous iPhone, which has more than 50 percent of the U.S. market — or the many cell phones driven by the Android OS (operating system).
If we had a snowfall this Christmas Eve, which isn’t going to happen based on the forecast — everyone, almost everyone, would have their phone out, taking digital photos, recording yet another white Xmas.
That wasn’t the case in 2004.
The first camera phones were introduced in the late 1990s by Sharp, which featured a 0.1-megapixel camera.
Apple didn’t release its first iPhone until 2007, which boasted a relatively measly camera with two megapixels.
Fifteen years ago, 2009, Apple released its iPhone 3GS, which featured a significant increase in digital photo quality with 3 megapixels.
As we moved into the 2010s, almost every family event was starting to be photographed, recorded, and more often than not, uploaded to someone’s Facebook page.
Fights at the polling places?
They were being photographed as well.
Which means, the relatively light, brief, snowfall that dropped from the Valley skies in early December 2017 was, no doubt, photographed by a lot of people; whereas, the bigger, historic snowfall of Christmas Eve/Christmas Day 2004 was mainly photographed by someone with a camera at hand.
Smart phones, a cell phone with a camera, online access, and so many other features, how much they have changed the landscape of everyday life.
Seems like ancient days when people actually took print photos in Hidalgo County and dropped them off at places like Walgreens, Ken’s Photos, Treviño Photos, Britton’s in McAllen.