Students, alums recount memorable snow days

The snowfall that blanketed UNC’s campus on Friday and Saturday was a rare sight. Students took to all parts of campus including the Pit, Old Well and Kenan Stadium field to make snow angels, throw snowballs and get a taste of the wintertime magic. 

Charles Konrad, a professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and director of the Southeast Regional Climate Center, said that the last measurable snowfall at UNC was three years ago, in January 2022. 

Sarah McElroy was a first-year in 2022 and she said she remembers it being somewhat similar to the recent snow showers. She said it was early in the semester and very icy, with higher amounts of snow fall and lower temperatures. 

McElroy said she also remembers trudging — and sometimes sliding — through the snow and ice to get to the dining hall. She said lot of people were outside playing in the snow on South Campus. 

“I remember people were trying to figure out how to sled down that big hill that goes down toward the Dean Dome,” McElroy said. 

McElroy said that her mother also attended UNC and would tell stories about students taking trays from Lenoir to sled on when it snowed. 

In other years, there have been snowball fights, snowman-building and sculpture contests for students to take part in. The sculptures have included rams, dragons, caterpillars and geometric snowmen. 

Anna Curtis, a chemistry professor who went to UNC as an undergraduate student, has fond memories of snow on campus. 

Curtis said she remembers a snowstorm in 2009 that students called “snObama” because it occurred around the time that President Barack Obama was inaugurated. She said that everyone was excited about the wintry scene, building small snowmen all around campus and having snowball fights with friends. 

“There wasn’t that much snow, it was really small, but it was big for here,” Curtis said. 

While students have enjoyed this year's snow, major winter weather events have been sparse in the Triangle in recent years. Konrad said that the region usually doesn’t see large amounts of snow, and any snow showers since 2022 haven’t been large enough to accumulate on the ground. 

Konrad said this is due to a high degree of temperature and precipitation variability in the area. He said that the past few winters in the Triangle have been relatively mild, with temperatures not dipping low enough to snow. All of this, he said, is dependent on the position of the jet stream. 

“The storm track has largely been north of our area and so we’ve kind of been, in a lot of cases, on the relatively warm side of systems because systems storms thrive on temperature differences,” Konrad said. 

He said that when we have been on the cold side, the temperatures haven’t been low enough to produce snow. Climate change impacts this as well, with our winters not being as cold as they were in the past. 

“We still have a lot of variability from one winter to the next, but averaged out, it’s definitely warmer now than it was 30 years ago,” Konrad said. 

However, Konrad said there’s still hope for students holding out for more snow. He said that climatologically, February is a big month for snow. 

“Even though temperatures are getting warmer, the track that these low pressures take, on average, tends to be a little farther south,” Konrad said. “It’ll still be maybe cold enough to snow.”

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