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TBT: An Extremely White Easter

On April 3-4, 1915, an Easter weekend blizzard plastered Philly with 19-plus inches of snow.

We will stop short of saying the weather forecast that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer the morning of April 3, 1915, nailed it.

"Unsettled," it read, "probably rain."

What followed was one of the most-incredible 12-hour sieges on record in Philadelphia, 19 inches of snow in 12 hours, according the Philadelphia Area Weather Book, by NBC10's Glenn Schwartz and Penn State's Jon Nese.

The meteorologists who blew the forecast were unavailable for comment Thursday.

That so much snow could survive the April sun on a day when the temperature didn't get below 30 was a remarkable achievement.

The nor'easter was blamed for at least 75 deaths at sea.

The Evening Bulletin, which hit the stands late on the 3rd, the day before Easter, began its lead story with: "Easter plans blew up with a bang today."

Note to our younger readers: An updated Evening Bulletin and its ilk were perhaps the closest things available to online journalism in 1915.

In a dash of understatement, the Bulletin reported: "To add to the general discomfort and dismay, it was the most unpleasant storm of the winter.

"Women compelled to be out were especially bad case, as their skirts offered more resistance to the wind."

A gust of 80 m.p.h. was reported in Atlantic City, which, nevertheless, managed to stage an Easter Parade the next day.

A Bulletin headline read: "Spring fashions attractive in winter setting."

At the time, incidentally, those 19.4 inches constituted the heftiest snow total since a very white Christmas five winters before. A total of 21.0 inches fell on Dec. 25-26, 1909.

If any lesson can found in all this, we would say that the world has become slightly warmer since 1915, but extreme weather is nothing new.