It certainly has been cold enough in North Texas to snow the past few days, but a lack of moisture kept the region just cold. Unless you live in Allen.
Unless you live in Allen and know the guy that spent New Year's Day and Tuesday snowing in his backyard.
Jeramy Melchiorre is a self-confessed weather nerd and father of two.
The Pennsylvania native measured over eight inches of snow fall in his backyard on Tuesday, thanks a homemade snow machine he admits he'd waited for more than two years to deploy.
"When we moved here five years ago, we all missed the snow," Melchiorre said. "It gets cold in short bursts, but it doesn't snow here."
It does now.
Melchiorre, who works with law enforcement agencies in his day job, said he has been fascinated with weather patterns since he was a kid.
So when he saw the deep freeze North Texas fell into over the weekend, he readied his backyard snow-emitting contraption for usage.
“I was up all night making it just looking out the window like I was 12 again," Melchiorre said.
He starts with an air compressor and combines it with a power washer and some hose attachments to create two streams of water with the air blowing beneath it. North Texas temperatures hovering around 27 degrees most of Tuesday took care of the rest.
"I've created a Nor'easter in my backyard," Melchiorre said, smiling. "I don't know who loves it more, my kids or me. It's got to be pretty perfect (conditions) to be able to make snow – and make good snow.”
So his two sons, Christian and Jude, spent most of Tuesday having friends over and exploring the finer points of snowball forming and trying to build an igloo in Allen.
Melchiorre said the snow started off a bit wet overnight but, as the humidity dropped on Tuesday, he said the snow began to pile up, measuring just over eight inches in the middle of his backyard.
At this point, the one metric he hasn't measured is the impact to his pocket book. As he dodged a snowball, Melchiorre said he wasn't worried about it.
“This is beautiful, worth every penny of the water bill," he said.