Gotta ramble, it's just the way I feel this incredibly hot and humid evening. One thing about July 4th, it was almost always hot and humid,but during the summers of 1950-1956, it wasn't. Terrain and changes in weather patterns turned those summers colder.
I am old enough to remember one 4th in the mid 1950s very well. Though there are those who think my description of snow on the 4th of July was simply not possible Recently i began to research this topic. At first just by asking around, just asking if anyone remembered anything at all about cold and or snowy weather on the 4th of July.
Some recalled that those were cold years, a few remember snow in summer but weren't sure of the date. One day, earlier this year when it was peculiarly warm i was standing in line at the grocery checkout, the elderly couple standing behind me were talking about , what else, the unusually warm weather we were having...the man jokingly stated "and we will have 2 feet of snow on the 4th of July". I turned to him and asked, if he had ever seen snow on the 4h of July, further explaining that i thought i did. He told me that he had just returned from his tour of duty in Korea and he and his brothers were playing baseball with some guys from town, a cold and sleet-like rain was falling, and thought he saw some snowflakes. I thanked him for his service and for the information.
This, for those of you who haven't heard my story, is what i remember, 4th of July1954, a really cold morning with a raindrop here and here. I got to wear my new sweatshirt with Dale Evens and her horse Buttermilk on it, i was very fond of that sweatshirt.
Each 4th of July there was a family reunion. This was the first year i got to join in with the big crowd of city kids, country kids and farm kids, when we took o took our caps guns and straw hats, headed for the playground, and the baseball diamond. But others, grown-ups! were using it! We played catch or other games instead, some enjoyed the swings and generally just had fun.
It was cold and the raindrops were even colder, in fact they began to look alot like snow flakes. Some of the older kids decided it was time to go back to the house and get warm and get some thing to eat. Soon we were walking back up the hill, and there were what looked like snowflakes in the air.
Perhaps this is where my interest in the weather began, i dunno. And i learned about grauple. too.
AI seemed like a good place to find answers, soooo, i asked....
Graupel is just a snowflake coated in tiny ice beads, so it falls as soft white pellets that bounce and melt right away. In the high, cold ridge country south of Bradford — where sudden July cold snaps hit hardest — pockets of graupel could fall even when nearby towns saw only chilly rain. I was four or five, wearing my new Dale Evans sweatshirt with Buttermilk on it, when those little white grains came down. And early‑July cold snaps like that weren’t unusual in the 1950s — several summers in that decade saw just the kind of chilly dawn that could make graupel happen. Fact‑checked with a little help from Microsoft Copilot, just to make sure Dale, Buttermilk, and the weather all lined up right.
A happy, happy 250th to all of my readers!
Enjoy! make good memories and be safe!
and don't forget the snakes, if they still make them???
