Time Machine: Snow in August?

CEDAR RAPIDS — Nine-nine years ago today, newspapers from Miami to Chicago to Montana to Pennsylvania printed reports that snow fell in Cedar Rapids, shortly after 10 a.m. Aug. 4, 1924.

The Gazette’s afternoon edition put the story on that day’s front page, noting the snow came at the end of a “particularly violent rainstorm.”

“Snow — the genuine stuff — fell in Cedar Rapids today, Aug. 4, A.D. 1924. The full date is given for the benefit of posterity, which in years to come, when weather freaks are discussed, will date back to the ‘time snow fell on Aug. 4,’” the story read.

“The snow was seen from the fifth floor of the Cedar Rapids Savings Bank building by attorney W.L. Crissman, and two other persons, who could scarcely believe their eyes as they saw the fine, white flakes descending.

“But when all three rubbed their eyes, looked closely again, and saw that it was still falling, they decided that the impossible was possible, that snow could actually come here in the peak of the summer’s heat. The sight was shortly after 10 o’clock this morning.”

The falling snow reportedly were fine particles that melted as soon as they hit the ground, “but it was snow just the same, as a score of reliable persons are prepared to swear to, if necessary,” The Gazette reported.

The International News Service reported the “snow flurry came immediately after the drenching rain and sent the thermometer tumbling.” By noon, the temperature was back up to 92.

On Aug. 12 that year, snow was reported at the University of Iowa golf course, “falling for several minutes at 1 p.m.” after the thermometer had dropped rapidly to 49 degrees. Those flakes, too, supposedly melted quickly.

On Aug. 15, the Waterloo Courier reported snow in Osage on Iowa’s northern border. It had rained all day before stopping between 10 and 10:30 a.m. When it started again, the precipitation was said to came in the form of snow.

That same day, Chicago residents saw snow mixed with rain — when it was 61 degrees.

On Aug. 21, a number of Sioux City resident claimed they saw it snowing at 6:19 p.m., when it was 87 degrees.

Fairfield’s ‘poke’ about the reports

Two days after The Gazette story about the Aug. 4, 1924, snow in Cedar Rapids, the editors of the Fairfield Ledger in south-central Iowa had a little fun.

The writer said the news came into the Fairfield newsroom via telegraph when it was 97 degrees there “in the shade, where there happened to be any shade.”

“We do not wish to question in the least the veracity of the telegraph nor the good faith of the correspondent at Cedar Rapids who sent out the dispatch,” the Fairfield writer stated. “We accept as the gospel truth the statement, and we realize what a difference a few miles make. The ground may have been covered with snow at Cedar Rapids and the clothing merchants and coal dealers doing a thriving business as a result of the sudden demand for their wares.”

Several more skeptical paragraphs later, the item concluded: ‘We always have thought a good deal of Cedar Rapids, and the snowstorm of this week makes it appear all the lovelier in our estimation.”

About 60 years later, in 1982, the 1924 August snow story surfaced again in The Gazette. The article quoted the Fairfield piece, saying the writer there was “taking a good-natured poke at Cedar Rapids.”

Could have been hail

Modern weather experts are just as skeptical as Fairfield reporters were.

Brian Pierce, a meteorologist with the Quad Cities office of the National Weather Service, said records show rain on Aug. 4, 1924, but no other kinds of precipitation.

There are records of hail falling in Cedar Rapids on other days that month in the weather service’s record system, and Pierce says it’s possible that it hailed on Aug. 4, but not nearly enough to the weather observation site to be recorded.

“The chances of it being snow, I would say, are probably zero,” Pierce said. ”What was seen was probably hail.”

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