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Tustin residents awoke on a cold January morning
in 1949
to discover that it had snowed during the night.
Photo courtesy Tustin Area Museum
Recent pounding rain
followed by a thick blanket of snow covering
Santiago Peak and the surrounding mountains with
temperatures that make you shiver and shake have
had some folks wondering if it ever snows in
Tustin.
Old timers aren’t
speculating. They know the answer. Yes, indeed,
it certainly has snowed in Tustin. Twice as a
matter of fact. The first snow fall was recorded
in the winter of 1881 while Tustin was still a
small village. The next time it snowed was in
the 20th century – Jan. 11, 1949, to be exact.
I missed that
phenomena because I was away at school, but my
mother filled me in on all the details. Since
she was born about 20 years too late for the
first snow in Tustin, she was in a state of
euphoria when she awoke to see snow in the
backyard. From her excitement, I anticipated
that she would tell me that great drifts of snow
covered the roads and orchards.
To my
disappointment, she described a storm that left
snow that could barely be measured in inches.
White patches covered the driveway, and the
shrubbery was frosted like a flocked Christmas
tree. The orange trees and the smudge pots were
dusted with snow, but, all in all, you had to
work hard to gather enough snow to make a decent
snowman.
The sun, which
soon penetrated the clouds, melted the white
stuff into muddy slush, except in the shade, but
not before people grabbed their Kodaks and
preserved visions of snow in Tustin for
posterity. Family albums contained black and
white photos of snow covering lawns and streets
as well as bundled up children scraping together
enough snow for a snowball or a snowman.
Areas on higher
ground, such as Lemon Heights, had more generous
coverage than the flat lands of Tustin, five
inches in some locales. The Santa Ana
Register, as the Orange County Register
was named in those days, had pages of beautiful
pictures showing the miracle of snow throughout
the Santa Ana Valley. Old Saddleback, as
Santiago Peak is commonly called, rose into the
sky at a height of 5,691 feet like a giant
marshmallow sundae.
The air was crisp
and cold, colder than the usual subfreezing
weather when smudge pots were lit to protect the
trees, and puddles and bird baths froze like
miniature ice rinks. Agriculture experts claimed
that the snow covering the trees protected the
Valencias, which would ripen in the spring and
the already ripe Navels from freezing.
Now some 60 years
later we are surrounded by snow, but it is
inaccessible or at least two hours away. Snow
enthusiasts, skiers and snow boarders, are
taking chains for their vehicles and heading for
the nearby ski resorts. The rest of us are
enjoying the beautiful views of the snow covered
mountains while we are outside and thankfully
hovering near the fire when we are inside.
Happy New Year!
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