Gallery • 4 Photos

Special to Aquila- Rishi Maheshwari

Layers of hail covered the backyards of many homes in the Evergreen area. Easily mistaken for snow, this precipitation was a result of the storm that took place on Saturday night.

The hills surrounding Silver Creek were covered in layers of hail after a storm on Saturday evening.

The “snow” that people in south San Jose are referring to is actually hail. Mercury News reporter Joyce Tsai wrote an article about differentiating between the two. 

“It wasn’t actual snow. It was hail, balls of ice,” she said in a phone interview. “The temperature was too high for there to be snow.”

Tsai interviewed National Weather Service meteorologist Drew Peterson, who said that the temperature on Saturday evening was roughly 50 degrees Celsius, whereas snow tends to form below 32 degrees.

Hail, defined as balls of ice, differs from snow in that it has an alternate structure and can occur under much warmer conditions. What may have caused the hail to be mistaken for snow, according to Peterson, is that the balls of hail accrued into sheets of ice, which to some look like snow.

Rishi Maheshwari (10) noticed the hail in his neighborhood.

“There was a lot of hail accumulating on the sides of the roads,” he said. “The backyards and front yards were flooded with hail as well that day.

Senior Ankita Pannu commented on this anomalous occurrence in the valley.

“It was really surprising because I had seen hail before, but it normally just lasted for a couple minutes,” she said. “This time, it lasted for probably over an hour. My whole street and backyard was all white.”

Even though the precipitation was not snow, this incident was one to be noted due to the drought in California and rarity of such snowlike substances in the Silicon Valley.