Snow Explanation

Perhaps I should explain just how rarely it snows here, so you can understand what all the fuss is about.

When I got to Houston, I was told the last time it had snowed here was two or three years before. That time, it fell for only half an hour before it stopped, and it didn't stick to anything. This is my third winter in Houston, and this was my first time ever seeing snow here.

Walking through the neighborhood near campus, we actually saw some people come out of their house to take pictures in the snow. Students were doing it on campus, too.

After dinner, a few of us stood chatting in the parking lot, snow falling around us. A woman came up to us and asked, "Is this your car? Would you mind if I took some snow off of it? My daughter has never seen snow before." The snow wasn't sticking to the ground, but it was sticking to cars and other elevated objects. Of course I didn't mind. She scooped up as much as she could, a tiny little handful. Her daughter (5? 6? 7 years old?) came screaming and laughing down from the restaurant's covered porch to take it from her mother, and tried throwing it. The snowball disintegrated in the air before it got anywhere near her mom.

Remember in To Kill A Mockingbird, when Scout runs crying to Atticus that the sky is falling? The first time I read that, as a middle-schooler in Colorado, I thought it must be an exaggeration--a character Scout's age who had never seen snow? It's not. Welcome to the Gulf Coast.