Small Wonders:

The only thing better than Vin Scully on a summer night when everyone is still playing is Vin Scully on an October night when only a few are left.

As we round the corner from summer to fall, exchanging sunscreen and heat stroke for extra blankets, sweaters and soup, a dreamer’s mind turns to visions of cooler delights. First, I want to be in the stands when the Dodgers win the World Series on a chilly autumn night (beating the Yankees in five games, please). And then I want it to snow.

A few weeks ago in this column writing about the Station fire I made the statement that soot and ash are the only natural snow we Angelenos know; for surely it has never really snowed in the transformed desert that is our city. In saying that, I was guilty of something every generation suffers: Historical Narcissism. Namely, that nothing happened before my blessed feet walked upon the earth.

Luckily my friend Chuck Mont wrote in to kindly correct me. Born in 1922 and a Burbank resident since 1958, Chuck let me know that it has, in fact, snowed in the greater Los Angeles area. Real snow. From the sky. Not a giant Slurpee machine.

Before moving to Burbank, Chuck lived in various L.A. neighborhoods.

“I was in the army training in late 1943 when it snowed quite a bit in Laurel Canyon,” he told me. He even sent me a picture of his future wife and parent’s cocker spaniel sitting in a field of the white stuff to prove it.

This got me wondering if it had ever snowed in Burbank. After a little research I found that it most certainly has. The great snowstorm of 1949.

News reports from the time tell of below freezing temperatures over a two-day period in January 60 years ago. Up to 8 inches of fresh powder blanketed every rooftop, street and palm tree in the area.

Wes Clark and Mike McDaniel have a great website dedicated to the “lore, local legends and history of Burbank, California,” and here (wesclark.com/burbank/ snow.html) I found a series of photos and firsthand accounts of that freak storm. Had I not known better I’d have mistaken the place in these photos for somewhere in the upper Midwest in the dead of winter.

More than another time, these pictures are of another world. I hear they were able to build snowmen on their front lawns. Snowmen!

I’ve seen it hail and rain in sheets. I’ve seen floods and landslides. But I’ve never seen it snow here except in our hills.