I lived in Michigan until I graduated from college, so I am very familiar with the Midwestern weather--hot summers, cold winters, and snow. When I moved to San Francisco, I had to get used to some other seasons. Winter was the rainy season, spring was pretty nice, summer was foggy and cold, and fall was the warmest season, but still not hot. Some people, like me, have adjusted to the weather and enjoy not having the extremes of hot and cold and don't mind the fog. Others complain that they are cold and miss the sun. San Francisco even has its own fake Mark Twain quote,"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."
I was always happy driving back from a summer vacation to Southern California, seeing the fog ahead, and dreaming of the respite from hot weather. I live in the part of San Francisco that was listed on an old map as "fog, uninhabitable." There have been some years where although the sun was shining downtown, the fog didn't lift around my house for over a month.
Anyway, needless to say, it doesn't snow much in San Francisco. In fact, the last time there was measurable snow was in 1976. Imagine our anticipation, then, when we saw the following weather report on Friday:
Snow flurries? Well, apparently there were some snow flurries on some of the higher elevations, but none of the snow stayed on the ground. The New York Times proclaimed "Snow Falls on San Francisco After a 35-Year Wait"*, but you can't compare "several high-lying city neighborhoods, including Twin Peaks, at some 900 feet, reported light snowfall" to the one inch on the ground we had all over the city in 1976. Besides, the flurries this time were stealth flurries, arriving in the middle of the night. Last time it snowed while people were awake! The article from KTVU saying "Snow Flurries Spotted in SF's Twin Peaks, Merced Heights" explains it.
Now February, 1976, that was a snowfall. I remember the small version of "Winter Wonderland" that we had in our city. There are two things that stand out in that memory. One was of my then almost 8-year-old looking out the backyard, and asking, "What is that stuff that looks like duck feathers falling in the yard?"
The other thing I remember was waiting for the bus that morning. As you may know, San Francisco has many residents who have arrived from other cities in the U.S. Normally, people are very quiet waiting at a bus stop. Everyone is polite, but people don't generally mingle. They tend to just wait patiently in their own little space. Well the day of the big snow in 1976 was really cold. As the group of us stood around waiting for the bus, watching our breath and shivering, one person said, "Oh, now I remember why I moved here from Chicago." The next person said, "I remember why I moved here from New York." Then I said, "I remember why I moved here from Detroit." And so it went. I guess none of us really missed the cold!
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