SNOW STORIES FROM 1976

Readers share photos and memories from that historic day in S.F.

No one in San Francisco was thinking about a winter wonderland when they went to bed on Feb. 4, 1976.

The Chronicle weather report from that day said only the highest Bay Area elevations — maybe Mount Diablo and the Santa Cruz Mountains — would see snowfall. Snow was at most a onceinageneration happening in San Francisco, with the biggest blizzard in its history arriving in 1887.

But the snow fell suddenly in the early morning, initially witnessed by only a few San Franciscans who stayed up past midnight, or were coming off the night shift. Many more didn’t realize what happened until they pulled open their drapes, turned on the radio, or walked outside to get their morning newspaper, and discovered their front yard covered in snow.

More than 4 inches fell in the higher elevations. Even at sea level, there was enough powder to cover car windows and lawns.

“San Francisco — and most of the Bay Area — turned white yesterday when an unexpected storm swept west from Nevada, carrying snow to much of California,” Chronicle reporter Robert Bartlett explained in a frontpage story.

“(What happened) is so complicated I’m not sure I understand all the details myself,” National Weather Service meteorologist Clyde Holmes told a reporter.

Fortyfour years later, the legend has only grown. Snow hasn’t fallen in more than trace amounts in San Francisco since, and it gets a little harder to imagine each year. So we started the S.F. Snow Day 1976 project on www.sfchronicle.com, crowdsourcing photos from The Chronicle and from readers to build a map that shows what snow looked like in your neighborhood.

The project got off to a strong start in 2019, with images of snow covering Twin Peaks, Diamond Heights, Lands End, Noe Valley, Mount Sutro and parts of the Richmond District. This year we added our first

photos from east of Van Ness Avenue, Golden Gate Heights and a photo from an airplane looking at San Francisco from Marin County.

The Chronicle sent four photographers out, including veteran photographer Art Frisch, who chartered an earlymorning plane without advance permission to take aerial shots of snow throughout the Bay Area. That included a photo of the Marin Headlands covered in snow, which became The Chronicle’s front page photo and one of the most famous images in the newspaper’s history.

Joe Rosenthal, who shot the iconic World War II “Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima” photo before a nearly 40year career at The Chronicle, was on the snow beat as well. But the MVP on the ground was arguably Clem Albers, a 73yearold who dashed across the city to capture snow at Lands End, the Japanese Tea Garden, Diamond Heights, Christmas Tree Point and more. More stunning discoveries have come from readers. Former SFPD officer Bill Fox was coming off his shift after midnight on Feb. 5, 1976, when he saw the first snowflakes fall. “I was a San Francisco kid — Sunset District — I’d never seen snow fall before,” Fox said in his written recollections of the event. “I slid open the window and stuck my head out and felt the snowflakes hitting my ears. For about 20 minutes, in the middle of that San Francisco night, I stood in my window and watched it snow so hard I could barely see across the street.”

A talented photographer, he grabbed a camera and took some of the best photos in the S.F. Snow Day 1976 collection.

With each new memory comes surprises. We now have photo evidence of four San Franciscans who used the opportunity to strap on skis.

When The Chronicle in 2019 pointed out there were no photos in the project documenting snow east of Van Ness Avenue, several readers stepped forward. That included Alex Friedman, whose father, Rudolph Schilling, took a stunning color photo from his apartment on Jones Street near California, showing white Nob Hill rooftops and the snowy Marin Headlands in the distance.

“Besides the snow on the Marin Headlands, note the snow on all the SF rooftops,” Friedman wrote. “Too bad the fog had descended over Mt Tam. That would have made it very special.”

All the photographs are special. With each one we receive, we fill in another blank, and the miracle snowfall of 1976 becomes a little more real again.

Art Frisch / The Chronicle 1976 Feb. 5, 1976, was the day it snowed in S.F. Art Frisch took this aerial image of the bridge and Marin Headlands that was featured on The Chronicle’s front page.

Clem Albers / The Chronicle 1976 Kids fashion a snowwoman out of the white stuff and twigs in Golden Gate Park on the snow day.

Courtesy Bill Fox 1976 Bill Fox documented the surprise snowfall, above, near his Diamond Heights apartment. He was a 25-year-old SFPD officer at the time. Left: At least one adventurer took the opportunity to strap on a pair of skis on Douglass Street in S.F.

Courtesy Tom Copi 1976