Snow in Malta, December 2014

There have been a number of pictures and videos of 'snow' in Malta the past few days (December 2014) and everyone's getting in a right tizwoz about what a historic event it is, how rare and how amazing. In the videos we're seeing white 'snow' falling from the sky. In the pictures we're seeing 'snowmen'. People need to calm the F down because all it's doing right now is HAILING and you are making 'icemen' if anything!

I think it's kind of cute that so many people are convinced of the snow (and if you read on, you'll see that I was actually one of them!), and it's ingenious for local pages to use sensationalist tactics to get more likes and shares but lets all take a deep breath and look at the facts. Snow is generally soft, frozen, crystallised water. It doesn't come whooshing down with serious force, it doesn't make cracking or banging sounds as it hits the floor. It's not hard balls of ice. That, my friends is hail. And although it is usually cold when it hails, it can hail when it's much warmer (far too warm to snow). Snowfall generally occurs in temperatures between 0 and 2 degrees centigrade. Right now the average temperature in Malta is 9oC. Far too warm for snow.

However, Malta currently has the perfect weather conditions for hail, which occurs usually during thunderstorms (which we've had no shortage of recently) and when the winds are high (as they always are in Malta).

Having said all that, when I left the apartment in St Julians this morning I did cry 'oh my gosh it's snowing!' as small white bits where floating down from the sky and landing gently all over us, so I can understand peoples excitement and think most of us actually just really want it to be snowing. A good friend of mine told me she witnessed the same thing in another area today and she is well aware of the differences between snow and hail, so I'm prepared to concede I could be wrong on this one. But, I caught some in my black scarf and had a good look before they melted and can confirm that they were balls, rather than flakes, so I can not claim to have witnessed this historic snow that is being predicted.

But, once all is said and done, even I should note that snow in Malta has been recorded a few times in the past 200 years, the most recent being as recently as 1962. The day after it snowed, on Feb 1st 1962 is the first and only time frost has ever been recorded in the history of Malta.

So ya know... it could  still happen and how lovely would it be if the first snowfall of (most of our) lifetimes in Malta happened just as the clock struck midnight on the New Year?

What do you think, is it going to snow tonight in Malta?