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Photos: Rare Snow in Lamorinda and the Tri-Valley

The Bay Area witnessed an exceedingly rare event today: substantial snow that actually stuck to the ground for more than a few minutes!

This wasn’t the light dusting that Mount Diablo sometimes gets. The snow in the Bay Area today fell thick and heavy in cold areas. Grizzly Peak in Berkeley reportedly saw some non-trivial snow accumulation.

But perhaps most surprising is the fact that the snow extended to higher-elevation areas in Lamorinda and the Tri-Valley. Residents who remember when we have 104 degree temperatures just a few months ago will be quite surprised to hear that the warmest part of the Bay Area had snow today.

Here is a photo of drivers commuting to work in Lafayette, California with a snow-capped hill in the background. The snow here is on a small hill in Lafayette, California, not atop a big mountain.

Snow on the hills in Lafayette, California

Snow in the Tri-Valley was an even more surprising thing to see. San Ramon, California is usually one of the driest, hottest places in the Bay Area. But today, it looked like Switzerland!

Forboding, snow-capped peaks replaced the usual green grass covered hills above City Center Bishop Ranch and the Bishop Ranch office park.

From the parking lot of City Center, one could see dustings of snow even at low elevations in San Ramon near Bollinger Canyon.

Throughout the Bay Area, people stopped to see and photograph the snow. There was a long line of cars on Deer Hill Road in Lafayette stopping to photograph Mount Diablo and the valley area completely covered in white powder.

A long-time Bay Area resident who spoke to the Bay Area Telegraph said that she has only seen this amount of snow in the Bay Area once in her life.

Enjoy the snow day, and be safe out there.

Thomas Smith

Thomas Smith is a food and travel photographer and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His photographic work routinely appears in publications including Food and Wine, Conde Nast Traveler, and the New York Times and his writing appears in IEEE Spectrum, SFGate, the Bold Italic and more. Smith holds a degree in Cognitive Science (Neuroscience) and Anthropology from the Johns Hopkins University.

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