Just under an inch of snow descended upon campus and throughout eastern and coastal area of Texas on Thursday night, and dozens of students rushed out of their dorms to take in the uncommon Houston weather event.
Temperatures veered close to freezing, and little of the snow on campus stuck to the ground in the first snow Houston has seen since 2009.
Pre-business freshmen Brittany Onwenu and Obumneke Jiwuaku took a break from studying for their accounting finals to look at the snow.
“I was really studying right now — we have a test tomorrow,” Onwenu said. “It started snowing and we got up, we had to see this.”
The first snowfall began a little after 10 p.m. and lasted just over an hour. Snowfall continued on-and-off throughout the night, and a thin layer lasted through the night. Onwenu and Jiwuaku said they have lived in Houston their whole lives.
“I haven’t see the (snow) since the fifth grade, and that (snow) was kind of ice. This is beautiful,” Onwenu said. “Everybody’s on Snapchat, and you see all the other people in Texas making snowman. Houston’s been through it all. We had the flood and now snow.”
The University did not postpone or cancel any final exams or campus activities due to the snow; fall classes finished a week prior on Dec. 8.
When the first snowfall began, dozens of students from Moody Towers and Cougar Village residence halls came outside to see the snow.
“I love seeing everyone outside. Everyone in front of CV1 — all the little freshmen were yelling and screaming and having fun,” said public relations junior and Beaumont native Garrett Clark, who lives in Moody Towers. “I always get more excited when it snows here than when I go to places where it’s normally snowy.”
One to three inches of snow fell throughout the city, according to KHOU, which also reported that 90 miles to our north Texas A&M University in College Station received 5 inches of snow, and Brownsville on Thursday had their third-ever snowfall recorded since the blizzard of 1895.