Parts of DC region woke up to light snow flurries Thursday

WASHINGTON - Parts of the D.C. region woke up to some light snow flurries Thursday morning – a sure sign that we are getting closer to the winter season.

FOX 5 Matthew Cappucci spotted the flurries on the VDOT traffic camera near McLean, Virginia between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m.

Cappucci says that while it doesn’t happened too often - you can have snow at temperatures above 40 degrees. During President Biden’s inauguration snow fell from the sky with temperatures around 42 degrees.

On April, 28, 1988, Reagan National Airport recorded snow at 48 degrees – on a day when high temperatures reached 59 degrees!

The flakes that fell Thursday morning were primarily north and west of Washington D.C., where temperatures were below freezing. Dew points were similar to temperatures though, which means the air is saturated and holding as much moisture as it can. The "extra" moisture falls as snowflakes.

On rare occasions and in opposite environments, it can snow in very dry conditions at temperatures high above freezing. For that to occur, a snowflake aloft must form at subfreezing temperatures, but into dry air. The snowflake's edges would evaporate and extract heat from the flake at the exact rate it was melting, allowing a small fragment of the ice to survive to the surface.

Thursday's highs are expected to be in the low-60s – so don’t worry about any accumulation! But flurries in October are a cool sight to see!