Snow in Texas isn’t unusual. We just saw that with Winter Storm Cora.
But on Jan. 13, 1985, 40 years ago today, one of Texas’ largest cities was digging out from an historic snowstorm.
A typical Texas snow even will blanket areas near and to the north and west of Dallas-Ft. Worth. This mid-January 1985 snowstorm, however, dumped up to 15 inches of snow across a broad swath of south-central Texas.
San Antonio picked up 13.5 inches of snow, most of which fell in 24 hours, the city’s all-time record snowstorm. Only once on record had they picked up as much as 6 inches of snow in a storm, and that was in late January 1926.
(MORE: The Strangest Places It Has Snowed)
As you could imagine that brought the city to a halt. Plows were called out to clear San Antonio International Airport’s runways for the first time.
Scenes of accumulated snow at both The Alamo and the city’s famed Riverwalk were a sight to behold.
The last time measurable snow fell at the city’s airport was about four years ago, during the back-to-back snow events – 3.7 inches, then another 2.5 inches two days later – and historic cold surge of mid-February 2021.
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.