The Coast Is Not Clear

摘要

During the 2004 Christmas holidays, a severe snowstorm that blanketed Ohio with two feet of snow and a rare snowfall in Texas captured headlines. While the media focused on these events, a rather uncommon and more stealthy type of snow event surprised inhabitants along the coastal plain of northern Carolina and southeastern Virginia. While nary a flake of snow drifted down on me populated Northeast urban centers such as Washington and Baltimore, a foot of heavy, wet snow blanketed locations such as Hampton, Virginia, and the Atlantic coast along the Delmarva Peninsula. Figure 1 illustrates the extremely short and narrow swath of heavy snow that fell along the coastal mid-Atlantic.