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On Today's Date: The Weirdest Christmas Snow I've Seen

This year, a white Christmas will be confined to the usual northern and mountain suspects. But it hasn't always been the case in Christmases past.

On Dec. 24, 2004, 20 years ago today, snow fell over much of coastal and South Texas leading to what we considered the most bizarre white Christmas in U.S. history.

(MORE: America's Strangest White Christmases)

This freak event remains the all-time snowstorm of record in both Victoria (12.5 inches) and Corpus Christi, Texas (4.4 inches).

Brownsville, Texas – roughly the same latitude as Miami – picked up 1.5 inches of snow on Christmas Day 2004, its first measurable snow since February 1895. The National Weather Service characterized this as "a historical first according to more than 150 years of weather data" in Brownsville.

The Houston metro area didn't miss out. Generally, 1 to 3 inches of snow fell across the southern suburbs, south of Interstate 10, including Pearland and Friendswood. Four inches of snow blanketed Galveston Island and Jamaica Beach.

The satellite image, once skies cleared, of this South Texas Christmas snow on the ground remains one of the most bizarre weather images of my meteorological career.

Imagine the sheer wonder of kids who had never seen snow before experiencing this – on Christmas, no less.

Visible satellite image showing snow cover over South Texas and the Texas Coastal Bend on Christmas Day, 2004. (Note: Clouds detected by satellite are shown over the Gulf of Mexico and also show up as white.)
(NASA Worldview)

This segment originally appeared in today's edition of the Morning Brief newsletter. Sign up here to get weekday updates from The Weather Channel and our meteorologists.

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.

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