(CNN Spanish) — If building snowmen isn’t your thing, you might be interested in knowing which are the places in the United States where never (or almost never) snows. They exist, but they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
In the southern tip of Florida it has never snowed, according to the popular site Farmers’ Almanac, which makes a count of snow-free territories. This includes places south of the city of Homestead, the publication says, explaining that “Florida’s low latitude and low altitude mean that temperatures are rarely cold enough for snow to fall, let alone accumulate on the ground.”
However, in other parts of Florida it has snowed, although it is an exceptional situation, so it cannot be said that the state is snow-free. Another of the states that you probably associate with a warm climate that leaves no room for snow is Hawaii, but the truth is that snowfall does occur there.
This is what explains NASA about it: “Although blizzard conditions are rare in Hawaii, snow is not uncommon on the two highest volcanoes in the island chain.” Snow, the aerospace agency says, is often associated with the Kona Low pressure system. This “occurs when the winds that normally blow from the northeast change and begin to blow from the southwest, over the leeward or “Kona” side of the islands. When the moisture-laden air from the tropical Pacific is pushed up by the mountainous topography, moisture precipitates in the form of heavy rain and snow,” says NASA.
Are there other snow-free places in the United States?
What’s left besides the southern tip of Florida? Two territories outside the continental United States: the Virgin Islands, located east of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and Guam, in the western Pacific (territory that, in the year 1898Spain ceded to the United States along with Puerto Rico).
The explanation for why this small handful of places is free of snow lies in the conditions needed for it to form. Snow requires low temperatures and moisture in the atmosphere, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. from the University of Boulder, Colorado. “In hot, humid places, like Florida, there is a lot of moisture in the air, but temperatures are rarely low enough to produce snow. And while many deserts are quite cold in winter, there is rarely enough moisture in the atmosphere to produce snow. Even in Antarctica, the coldest and most icy continent, there is a region called the Dry Valleys, where it is very cold, but it is so dry that hardly any snow falls,” they explain in this regard.