A white Thanksgiving or Christmas? Here’s a list of big Macon snow events.
Holiday snowfall in the South is a dream for many.
A Thanksgiving snowball fight after you’ve finished a filling meal might be the most perfect thing. And who doesn’t dream of a white Christmas morning?
Holiday flakes don’t usually fall in the Macon area, but it has happened before.
Historically, more than three inches of snow in a single day is a rare event, according to National Weather Service data.
Snow doesn’t typically fall south of Macon, and if snow comes to Macon, it is typically seen in January, said Nick Morgan, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Peachtree City.
Historically, Macon’s biggest snowfalls have occurred in February.
Thanksgiving
The National Weather Service’s Peachtree City office has published climate information for every Thanksgiving day in their records. The holiday has been celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November since Congress passed a resolution in 1941. Before that, the holiday was celebrated on the last Thursday of the month.
No snow has fallen on Thanksgiving in Macon, according to the National Weather Service’s website.
Christmas
Macon has seen snow only once at Christmas. The highest snowfall total was 0.1 inches that fell in 2010.
The big ones
Since 1893, Macon has seen daily snowfall totals of three or more inches nine times, according to the National Weather Service. A whopping 11 inches fell on Feb. 9, 1973. It was part of a snowstorm that ended up dumping 16.5 inches on the city.
The Telegraph referred to the event as “The Great Snowfall of ’73.”
At the beginning, snowflakes were “as big as a man’s watch crystals,” and eventually, they “piled up into uncountable layers.”
“Nobody had any idea at this time that the community was headed for a record snowfall,” The Telegraph wrote on Feb. 12, 1973.
Other major single-day snowfall totals include:
6.9 inches fell on Feb. 25, 1914
5.5 inches fell Feb. 10, 1973
4 inches fell Feb. 23, 1901
4 inches fell Dec. 31, 1899
3.7 inches fell Jan. 23, 1955
3.4 inches fell Feb. 18, 1979
3 inches fell Feb. 12, 2010
3 inches fell Dec. 19, 1901
“There’s not really any (snow in Macon) in November,” Morgan said. “In December, we see a total normal of .1 inches. It peaks in January around .4 inches. February seems to be a little drier. ...So relatively light.”
This story was originally published November 27, 2019 at 6:00 AM.