(Photo by Melissa Wallenstein)
It’s beginning to look a lot like…Halloween? Area residents woke up Sunday morning to a coating of fresh snow that was more reminiscent of the festive Holiday season instead of the upcoming celebration of spooky jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treating.
After a period of seemingly never-ending rainfall last week, temperatures dropped last Sunday, October 14, enough to let the area see the first measurable snow for this Fall season.
The snowfall reports posted by the National Weather Service of Sioux Falls lists Lennox as receiving approximately 4 inches. According to the NWS, the heaviest observed snow was located in a swath from nearby Tea all the way to Jackson, MN, with Rock Rapids, IA, receiving the heaviest amount of 6.8 inches.
After the snowfall on Sunday, temperatures plummeted below freezing Sunday night into Monday morning, with lows averaging around 24 degrees.
According to the NWS, this was the 4th earliest snowfall of an inch or more for the Sioux Falls area with the earliest on record having occurred on September 25, 1969. In addition, the NWS posted on social media that, for Sioux Falls, this snow event marked the 5th shortest time period between spring and fall snowfalls with a 180 day snow-free gap. The NWS stated that the shortest spring/fall gap of snow was in 1970, with a period of 169 days. The NWS explained that the average spring/fall gap is around 237 days, with the first one inch snowfalls clocking in around November 17, on average.