100 years ago in Spokane: Cold snap brings August snow to Mount Spokane

From our archives,

100 years ago

The headline was startling, considering it was Aug. 19: “First Snow on Mount Spokane.”

A snowstorm on August 18, 1916, had given a “mantle of white” to the mountain, which was “a fitting climax to a bit of freak weather such as Spokane has seldom experienced in August.” Snow was reported even by fruit growers in “the foothills districts.”

The cold weather descended on Spokane on Aug. 17, when the high was only 54 degrees – the lowest temperature recorded between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. during August in Spokane’s history, the newspaper reported. (There had been a colder high temperature in August previously, however, when the high was 52 on Aug. 31, 1898, a record that still stands, according to the National Weather Service).

From the juvenile beat: Opal Jones, a 14-year-old boy, was leading juvenile authorities on a “merry chase” through three states. The boy had been sent to a juvenile institution in Montana, from which he escaped and high-tailed it through Idaho and on to Spokane.

Officials apprehended him on the streets and took him to the Washington Children’s Home Society. He fled as soon as he arrived and was “again on the streets.”

Now the search was on in Seattle, because he had met another boy on the street and told him, “I am going to beat it for Seattle.”