EDINBURG, Texas—When the power goes out, the one item in her freezer that Loren Dykes races to save is a 15-year-old snowball.“I don’t know if it’s technically still called snow, but it’s something,” she said. “It looks like a bit of crunchy ice.”
Christmas Day 2004 marked the first time snow fell in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley in 109 years. Residents raced to make their first snow angels, build their first snowmen and have their first snowball fights. Many had never before seen snow. Some considered it a miracle.
Ms. Dykes was one of many locals who packed snowballs, put them into Ziploc bags or Tupperware and stuffed them in the back of their freezers. Many are now struggling to keep their frozen keepsakes alive, a battle they are losing to freezer failures, carelessness and molecular deterioration.Inocencio Quinones was devastated when he found out last year that his sister had thrown out his 2004 snowball. His late grandfather had told him to keep the piece of the “day we will remember forever,” Mr. Quinones said. Back then, cellphones didn’t take photos. He drove all over town trying to buy a disposable camera from a gas station. They were all sold out.
“We were tourists in our own city,” he said.
Lorraine Moore remembers staying up until the early hours of the morning to watch in amazement after it began snowing on Christmas Eve 2004. She moved to South Texas after living in Oregon and Indiana, so had experience with snow. Her son and daughter, then in their 20s, had never seen it. They put aside a couple of snowballs and a small snowman into the freezer.
In 2011, Ms. Moore discovered their keepsakes had mostly disappeared. The snow had evaporated, leaving only tiny remnants of ice.It turns out snow deteriorates and becomes denser over time, according to Noah Molotch, a professor who directs research into snow hydrology at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
“I don’t have a lot of experience with storing snowballs in freezers for 15 years, but…when you’re opening and closing the freezer over time you’re letting water vapor escape from the snow,” Mr. Molotch said. “Eventually all of the ice would vaporize.”Some people in the Rio Grande Valley have only themselves to blame for their losses. One man said on Facebook that he got drunk and made a michelada from his snowball. J.P. Rodriguez, a city commissioner for the city of Weslaco, said he considered making his into a snow cone but decided instead to throw it out.
For others, the snowballs changed the direction of their lives.
Oscar Garza made headlines in 2005 when, as a college student, he sold a year-old snowball from Brownsville, Texas, on eBay for $92. He never got his payment, he said recently, and ended up keeping it. It was in a family freezer for a dozen years or so, until his father moved, and it got tossed.Although the sale fell through, the snowball helped spur Mr. Garza to a career in marketing, he said. It showed he could spot a fad and generate a buzz.
“It has come up in my first interview at every job since then,” said Mr. Garza, who is now a marketing consultant in San Francisco.
Kathryn Childers, writer and speaker in Rockport, Texas, self-published three books of photos from the miracle snowfall of 2004. At book signings, she hears from people about the snowballs still in their freezers.
In December 2017, the Rio Grande Valley got snow again, only the third time in history, according to the National Weather Service. It was a light dusting, much less than in 2004. Yet in some areas there was enough for people who had missed collecting snowballs the last time to stash one in the freezer.
Students at San Benito High School spent the day playing on the football field, and they asked their theater teacher, Dirk McElyea, to keep a snowball in the classroom freezer. He occasionally shows it off to students.
“I’m not a hoarder or anything, but it doesn’t take up any room,” he said. “It makes a good story and I’m a theater director, so stories are what we do.”Linda Barrios’s heart warmed seeing snow for the first time in 2004. The Brownsviille resident had long wondered what it would be like. Standing under the falling flakes, she did what she had seen on TV. She stuck her tongue out, she said: “It felt like winning the lottery.”
Ms. Barrios didn’t think to keep a snowball from 2004, but she got a second chance in 2017. She keeps a 3-year-old snowball is in her freezer to remind her of the miracle that winter—how the snow unexpectedly paused her family’s busy life. The teenagers had their sports practices canceled, her husband stayed home from work, and they all played together outside.“I will keep it until the day I pass it on to my children,” she said. “It will be in my will.”
