When rumors of snowfall began to spread around the school the week before Jan. 21, junior Leonid Kolonin told everyone the rumors would come true.
He checked his weather app every couple of hours, watching the forecasts fluctuate from three inches to nine inches and back down to five inches. No one believed Kolonin as he continued to promise snow, but he stayed optimistic.
Sophomore Vincent Nguyen shrugged off the forecast. “Cool,” he thought to himself. “Fifty percent chance of snow? It’s going to be cold? Alright.”
Even when Houston does get snow, it’s not much.
But as the predicted winter storm approached, sophomore Victoria Siebert couldn’t help but reminisce about the fun she had the last time it snowed during the 2021 freeze. She, her little brother and a little girl who lived across the street had gone outside to play in the one inch of snow. At one point, Siebert even found a plastic storage box, took off its lid, put her brother and neighbor inside and pushed them down the driveway like they were in a sleigh.
“It would be fun to do that again,” she thought.
On Sunday, Jan. 19 at 4 p.m., HISD superintendent Mike Miles sent an email announcing that school would be cancelled Tuesday and Wednesday due to inclement weather, adding two days to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day three-day weekend. Kolonin, Nguyen and Siebert all appreciated that even if it didn’t snow, they would at least have extra time to complete their schoolwork.
Monday night, they all went to bed without seeing much snow. Kolonin and Siebert saw something falling, but it seemed more like ice than snow.
“If it happens, it happens,” Siebert thought.
The next morning, Nguyen and Kolonin both woke up at 8 a.m. and looked outside.
Siebert woke up at noon, and the first thing she did was pull up her blinds.
“It was just beautiful,” Nguyen said. “Everything was covered in snow, like a blanket on top of the grass. It was like waking up to a Christmas present.”
Three inches.
That’s about how much snow the National Weather Service estimated fell in Houston from Monday evening to late Tuesday morning during the winter storm. But as much as 5.5 inches fell in some areas, including Baytown.
According to ABC13, it’s the most snow Houston has received in 85 years.
And thanks to the winter storm only impacting southeast Texas and the lack of constant below-freezing temperatures, power outages and pipe bursting were minimal. Houstonians were free to enjoy the day.
Kolonin and his mom brought their skimboards to Hermann Park and joined hundreds of people in skiing and sliding down every inch of the Miller Outdoor Theatre’s hill. Two men from Colorado had outfitted the hill earlier that morning with traffic barriers and skate rails to create jumps for people to try as they slid. Others brought surf boards, kayaks, trash can lids, flattened cardboard boxes and anything else they could find that could glide on the snow.
“It was a crazy public ski resort,” Kolonin said. “All the friends that I tried to invite passed because they didn’t think it was safe to drive there, but my mom had a pretty off-roadie car, so we thought it was good to drive on that. I think they should have went. I did more snowboarding in Houston than I did in Utah, which just really made my year so far.”
While Siebert’s neighbor moved away in 2021, when Siebert left her bedroom on Tuesday afternoon, her brother greeted her: “I was waiting for you to wake up.”
She bundled up into her winter clothes and laughed as her brother ran outside to feel the cold. “Go have fun,” their mom said. “Just leave your shoes outside.”
They started throwing snow at each other in the front yard and, after an unsuccessful attempt to sled down their driveway with boogie boards, they laid in the snow accumulated in their mom’s boyfriend’s truck bed.
“We wanted to make the most of it,” Siebert said. “In Houston, we don’t really get snow like that, so we just had fun while we could.”
Nguyen also spent the day with his brother, throwing on clothes and running outside as soon as he could. The first thing he did was make a snow angel, and right afterwards he knew he wanted to make a snowman.
As his brother gathered snow into piles, Nguyen learned how to roll and compact the snow, making a sphere so large he had to place it on a bench to regain his strength before he could place it on the snowman.
He and his brother couldn’t find anything for the snowman’s face, so they found some Welch’s grape gummies in the kitchen to give him eyes and a smile. They also found four cowboy hats they’d brought from Vietnam so they, their mom and the snowman could match. It ended up being over five feet tall.
“The snowman was covered with leaves, sticks and all the grass and stuff, but it was great,” Nguyen said. “I’m really grateful that we received snow. It really brought a lot of joy.”
