On Today's Date: Valentine's 1895 America's 'Most Anomalous Snowstorm'
From Feb. 14-16, 1895, 130 years ago, a major snowstorm buried parts of the Gulf Coast in over a foot of snow. Yes, that's right, over 12 inches of snow in some of the southernmost locations in the Lower 48 states.
The town of Rayne, Louisiana, set the state's all-time record with 24 inches of snowfall. Lake Charles, known more recently for damaging hurricanes and flash flood events, picked up 22 inches of snow. Baton Rouge had 12.5 inches and New Orleans 8 to 10 inches of snow.
This Valentine's storm was even more bizarre in Texas. Houston was buried in a record 20 inches and even Galveston managed over a foot of snow (15.4 inches) just five years before America's deadliest hurricane wiped out the city.
But even that wasn't the most bizarre part of this storm.
Brownsville, Texas, picked up 5 to 6 inches of snow. They've only managed measurable snow two other times since 1895, one on Christmas 2004, the other in December 2017.
And snow flurries even were seen in Tampico, Mexico, below the Tropic of Cancer, the most southerly sea-level snow observed in the Northern Hemisphere, according to weather historian Christopher Burt.
The storm went on to wring out snow elsewhere along the coast from Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to Georgia, including as far south as Tampa.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
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