It’s been several years since Rock Hill saw an inch of snow. Will that streak end soon?
Editor’s note: This story published on Dec. 23, 2024 and was updated on Jan. 3., 2025
It’s early 2021, when school board members in Fort Mill stumble into an unusual debate. The COVID pandemic ushered in an era of online learning. Now kids don’t have to be at school to be in class.
But what, board members mused, about the snow day?
“I have really good memories as a kid, and even as an adult, of the snow day. Right?” board member Brian Murphy said at the time. “Just the random day you wake up and there’s wonderful white stuff everywhere and you go out and play in it and freeze your digits off, and come back in and drink hot chocolate.”
Turns out, schools haven’t had to deal much with snow since. And snow day memories are fading. This decade, an inch or more of snow fell on the Rock Hill region just twice. The city of Rock Hill only got it once, on Jan. 22, 2022. No place in York, Lancaster of Chester counties got that much since.
New Year’s Eve moved the Rock Hill region’s current dry spell into the fifth longest on record without an inch or more of snow.
The National Weather Service forecasts a major winter storm for much of the country this weekend, and into Monday, Jan. 6.. Ice is expected as far south as the southern Appalachians. But while the Rock Hill forecast dips as low as 23 degrees (Friday night) and predicts up to a 90% chance of precipitation (Sunday night), there’s no snow.
Snowstorms in Rock Hill
Still, some of the biggest snow storms ever to hit Rock Hill came unexpectedly. Here’s a history of snow in Rock Hill, to put the latest weather in perspective:
▪ The National Weather Service has 13 main and 77 secondary weather recording stations that collect or once collected data in the three-county Rock Hill region. One near Winthrop University is the longest-running station, with daily recordings since Dec. 1, 1899. Another near the Catawba Nation reservation is continuous from Nov. 1, 1906.
▪ The 13 current and former main stations combine to show more than 208,000 daily weather readings. About 0.8% of them — or 1,730 readings — recorded either snowfall, snow depth remaining from prior days or both. They include 604 snowfall readings and 571 days with trace amounts of snowfall.
▪ The first recorded snow was a trace amount on Dec. 28, 1899. The first snow of an inch or more came on Feb. 23, 1901, when 1 inch fell in Rock Hill.
▪ Beyond trace amounts, it’s only snowed in the November through April months. The most recorded snow has come December through February. There have been trace reports other months, even through the summer.
▪ The most snow days in a calendar year happened in 2010. The were nine days across January, February, March and December with a high of 4 inches of snow the day before Valentine’s Day. There were eight snow days in 1936 and seven each in 1912, 1960, 1970 and 2004.
▪ From February 1948 to December 1951, the Rock Hill region went a record 1,410 days without an inch or more of snow in a day. The ongoing streak also ranks behind dry patches from 2014-17 (1,122 days), 1973-77 (1,114 days) and 1955-58 (1,101 days). It just passed a 1933-35 stretch of 1,073 days.
▪ Three times, weather stations recorded a foot or more of snow falling in a day. There have been 35 days where 6 inches or more snow fell, from 1902 to 2014.
White Christmas a rare event
If folks in Rock Hill wanted a white Christmas, they needed to pop in the old Bing Crosby movie.
It’s been nearly a generation since the only Dec. 25 snowfall on record at more than an inch. Only one other Christmas Day snowfall registered more than trace amounts.
A holiday record 4 inches of snow fell on Dec. 25, 2010. It was the first of three straight days of snow. Half and inch of snow also fell on Dec. 25, 1962. Trace snowfalls were recorded on Christmas in 1909, 1947, 1953, 1960, 1969, 1970, 1975 and 2020.
Four other Christmas Days had snow on the ground that hadn’t melted yet. A 3-inch snow depth remained in 1928. There was an inch in 1930 and 1935. Trace snow depth remained in 1963.
More than a dozen other times, it’s snowed in the week leading to Christmas or the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Top 10 snow days in the Rock Hill region
Despite relatively little snow compared to northern parts of the country, the Rock Hill region still has had its moments to send people scrambling to the grocery stores for bread and milk. Here’s a look at the biggest snowfalls ever to hit the area, and a little on what else was happening at the time.
2004
A storm unlike any other on record rolled in on Feb. 26, 2004. Children reveled in it, road workers scrambled and volunteer firefighters used churches as makeshift shelters for people stranded in traffic. The roof collapsed on a building off Constitution Boulevard in Rock Hill, under the weight of more than a foot of snow.
The Winthrop weather station recorded 7 inches of snow the first day, a Thursday. Another 10.3 inches followed on Friday. A weather station near the Catawba Nation reservation tallied the highest daily snowfall ever recorded in the region that Friday, at 13.5 inches.
The four highest snow depth recordings in the region’s history came from that storm. Two days after the worst of the storm, on Feb. 29, 2004, a Fort Mill station recorded a record depth of 18 inches.
1988
The mayor of Sharon couldn’t get out of her home, Lake Wylie coves were frozen and school officials were planning makeup days after a Jan. 7, 1988, storm. Still, shoppers braved the weather for the grand opening of a new Winn-Dixie grocery story on Cherry Road in Rock Hill that day.
The storm even appeared to deter crime, according to reports at the time. The York County Sheriff’s Office filed five investigations reports that snowy Thursday, down from 13 the day prior. Officers mused that criminals knew they’d be easier to track in the snow.
The Winthrop weather station registered 12 inches of snow that Thursday. The weather stayed cold. A foot of snow remained on the ground through the weekend. At least one gauge in the region recorded snow on the ground for nine straight days.
1912
The Herald reported a thick and fast falling of flakes on a Saturday night, from about 7 p.m. to midnight on Feb. 10, 1912. It was difficult to measure the snow that melted “rapidly during the forenoon” of a warm Sunday. The paper estimated it topped 2 inches, but reported it was a foot or two deep in some drifts.
That Rock Hill report was a dusting compared to what Heath Springs got. A weather station in that town, between Lancaster and Kershaw in southern Lancaster County, recorded 12 inches of snow. It was the fourth day that year where it snowed 2 inches or more in Heath Springs, and the second day with 6 inches or more.
1935
A barely white Christmas in 1935 gave way to a flurried new year. In between, nearly a foot of snow fell on Rock Hill.
Gauges measured two or three inches of snow starting three days before Christmas. It didn’t snow Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, though the Catawba station measured an inch of snow still on the ground on Dec. 25. Then a new storm hit on Dec. 29, 1935.
The Herald front page, beside reports of Benito Mussolini losing troops in Ethiopia and Charles Lindbergh family travels in Europe, detailed a “raging blizzard” from Atlanta to New England. The Winthrop station measured 11 inches of snow, and the Catawba one 9.5 inches. Gauges recorded 6.5 inches in Heath Springs and 5 inches in Chester.
The state highway department didn’t own a snow plow at the time, according to reports, so “improvised machines” were used to clear roads. Charlotte snow “virtually paralyzed” highway traffic, delaying trains and canceling bus routes. In the middle of the Great Depression, Charlotte snow was a “windfall to hundreds of unemployed who were put at work with shovels.”
1914
The South was “covered with mantle of white” snow, according to the Herald headline, when folks woke up on Feb. 26, 1914. Snow that started the afternoon prior didn’t melt overnight.
On the same day the main building of the old city hospital on Clay Street in Rock Hill burned to the ground (the paper estimated up to a $6,000 loss for the building converted by that time to a residence), measurement began.
The Catawba station, after trace amounts the two days prior, recorded 10 inches of snow that Thursday. Winthrop got 8 inches. Heath Springs measures 7 inches. The weather then changed. Heath Springs had a low of 18 degrees but then a high of 45 degrees. Temperatures were similar in Rock Hill. No snow depth was recorded in the following days.
1983
A surprise snow sent school children home, filled area roads with wrecks and froze new spring gardening equipment one store owner had just put out for sale on March 24, 1983. “Budding azaleas and blooming peach trees” felt the frosty weather, according to the paper.
The timing of the snow could’ve changed at least a small part of television history. It hit the day after hundreds of people in Chester County gathered at the War Memorial Building for details on the planned television mini-series “Chiefs,” filmed two months later for a three-night run on CBS.
The Winthrop station recorded 10 inches of snow, despite that Thursday’s low temperature never dropping below 32 degrees. Winthrop (10 inches), Catawba (10 inches) and Chester (7 inches) stations all recorded snowfall on Friday, but it appears those amounts came during the Thursday storm. The area was already thawing beneath a “Carolina blue sky” on Friday morning, according to the paper.
2000
Y2K may have been overblown, but snow storms in Rock Hill just weeks later weren’t. The Jan. 25, 2000, Herald front called in “Round 2.” The Catawba station recorded 3 inches of snow two days prior. Then, 10 inches hit on the Tuesday in late January.
It was part of nine straight days with snow in the ground in Rock Hill. The Winthrop and Chester stations didn’t record new snowfall on Jan. 25, but they had 9 and 8 inches that day respectively listed for snow depths.
The millennial snow day was a snapshot in time. Shoppers raided grocery and video rental stores. Beside frigid snow shots on the Herald front, an article detailed high hopes for George Bush and Al Gore that they’d win Iowa caucuses in landslides on their way to presidential party nominations. Spoiler alert, they’d end their campaigns in anything but a landslide.
1971
Weather pushed a feature photo of Rock Hill High School’s Johnny McCollum and York High School’s Leon Hope, both slated to play in the Shrine Bowl the following day, to the side of the Herald’s Dec. 3, 1971, paper. That Friday, the Winthrop station registered 9.7 inches of snow. Chester got 3 inches, and 3.5 inches more on Saturday. The Catawba Station recorded trace amounts Friday but 7.5 inches on Saturday.
School and civic events throughout the area were canceled or postponed. They’d play the 35th Shrine Bowl that weekend, though, on a muddy Memorial Stadium field in Charlotte. South Carolina won 3-0 to take the all-time lead in the series, 16-15-5.
The Herald’s account of the snow storm noted sunny skies on Thursday. It ended with a twist on the common grumbling for all the times meteorologists predict snow that never falls.
“For once the weatherman can say, ‘I told you so.’ ”
1902
One of the most spread out snow storms evidently walloped Charlotte. On Valentine’s Day in 1902, three inches of snow fell at the Winthrop weather station. The next day nearly brought more. Feb. 15, 1902, saw 9 inches of snow at Winthrop and 5.5 inches at Heath Springs. It was the first time snow was recorded in Heath Springs. The next day Rock Hill got 2 more inches and Heath Springs got 1.5 inches.
Snow hit at least from Atlanta to Virginia. Charlotte got 15 or 16 inches, according to reports out of Atlanta published in the Herald. Snow started at about 4 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, a Friday, and sleigh bells were soon jingling.
“So seldom is it that we have a good snow that the young people do not allow it to get good settled before getting out the sleighs,” the paper reported.
2003
The Rock Hill region faced near record low temperatures and high winds when a Jan. 23, 2003, storm hit. Schools and businesses closed. School district administrators, almost two decades before online learning became an option during the COVID pandemic, scrambled to reschedule what was the second day lost to weather that year.
A Canadian air system blew in, causing snow across much of the eastern U.S. A plane from Tennessee skidded on the icy runway at Rock Hill’s airport, and a truck of live turkeys overturned in Chester County. The driver was fine but there were “a few turkey fatalities.”
The Catawba station registered 8 inches of snow. Winthrop saw 6.3 inches. Fort Mill and Chester stations didn’t record snowfall, but had snow depths of 7 inches and 5 inches, respectively.
This story was originally published December 23, 2024 at 6:08 AM.
