According to the National Weather Service, the snow that fell yesterday morning building up to a point where I could write a date into a table was just a figment of our imagination.

Here I was all set to blog to you today that we had our first snowfall, but obviously I was imagining things.  When the pup and I went outside at 5:30am yesterday and what seemed to be drizzle turning into the white fluffy stuff wasn’t what we saw.  When there was white stuff all over the roofs of South Anchorage, it was just water that wouldn’t disappear fast.  The stuff all over the grass?  Really heavy frost.

While we all swear that on September 23rd, it snowed in Anchorage, the National Weather Service did not list it as a day with recordable snow because – according to them – it wasn’t a recordable amount.  It turns out that the NWS uses what is called a “Snow Board” to measure snow depth; but for Anchorage records it is located at a single location on the southwestern part of town called Sand Lake.  This location is pretty close to the coast, near sea level, and further away from the cold air that blows over top of the Chugach mountains and into town.  Or in other words, but the time the snow reached Sand Lake, it wasn’t snow.  The snow board did record a “trace”, but according to the NWS this doesn’t count.

So … False Alarm Folks … snow hasn’t started in Anchorage yet.  Heck, you couldn’t even argue that today.  We had frost this morning but its blue skies and highs in the 50°s.

On the mountains it has though.  What was “Termination Dust” last week is now a winter wonderland.  Nearly two thirds of the Chugach mountains are now white.

But I will tell you right now — that snow up there?  It ain’t melting until 2014.