December 19th. With less than a week left until Christmas, the entire North Arican continent was decorated in a festive array of red, green, and gold. The strong holiday atmosphere made people want to imrse themselves, to dance along with the Christmas carols, relax, and enjoy the biggest holiday of the year.
However, for professional athletes, there was no ti to be with their families. Not just on the 19th, but even on Christmas Eve, the 24th, there was a ga, and the next week's Sunday night ga would be the Christmas Day ga. The holidays were a happy season for family reunions, but for professional athletes, they were workdays for competing on the field. In North Arica, people often joked that "Christmas Day gas" belonged to the NBA, while "Thanksgiving Day gas" belonged to the NFL. But this year, the NFL's official ga day happened to fall on Christmas, so, without any special arrangents, they had a whole day of spectacular gas.
Before the Christmas Day ga, this week's Monday Night Football also ushered in a peak mont that all of Arica was watching! The night ga was scheduled to officially start at 5:30 p.m. Pacific ti and 8:30 p.m. Eastern ti, but the entire North Arican continent was already warming up early in the morning. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social dia sites were flooded with related topics that were constantly being updated. The city of San Francisco, in particular, had woken up early, eagerly awaiting the arrival of this top-tier showdown.
Raymond Jackson was one of them. He was a die-hard 49ers fan. In 1981, he witnessed Joe Montana's shocking "The Catch" in a coback victory against the Dallas Cowboys, and since then, red and gold had been deeply embedded in his blood. That year, he was only 14 years old, and for the next 30 years, his loyalty had never wavered, even through the eight-year slump.
He was also a stadium manager. When he was 24, he beca a janitor at Candlestick Park, responsible for cleaning and maintaining the stadium every day and making preparations before a ga day. The greatest satisfaction of this job was that he could watch every ga from the stands. In the 20 years he had been working, he had never missed a single ho ga.
Today was no exception. Raymond woke up before 4 a.m. and thodically began to prepare for his work today. He was looking forward to today's ga, looking forward to the team defeating the visiting Pittsburgh Steelers at ho. He firmly believed that the 49ers could return to their glory. This belief had never wavered, even through the low point of the past eight years. He walked into the stadium step by step, a habit of his. He liked to walk around the edge of the stadium before he started working and sincerely pray for a victory, as if this small action could be a blessing for the team to win the ga.
But today, the feeling under his feet was a little strange. The sky was pitch black. He couldn't see any light. In the dense darkness, a faint moonlight revealed the outline of the stadium, but he couldn't see the shape of the seats. He could only rely on his mory to draw the arc of the sky above Candlestick Park. Although it was a bit unusual, Raymond still persisted in his superstitious little action, refusing to go back indoors before finishing, as if a little change could change the team's destiny today. However, the strange feeling beca more and more obvious. The deep and shallow footprints clearly felt the thick moisture. It seed to be the leftover marks after a heavy rain last night. The air was filled with a sharp coldness that quickly passed over his cheeks, and even though he was wrapped in a thick jacket, he couldn't help but shiver. It was cold, bone-chilling cold.
Raymond even felt that his brain was a little frozen. He couldn't rember the last ti he felt such a cold weather in San Francisco. Now he could only pray that the heavy rain would end, the sun would co out after it got light, and the temperature would slowly warm up, otherwise, the temperature would be even colder during the ga at night. After walking around the stadium, Raymond returned indoors and turned on the lights in the stadium. "Bang! Bang bang!" The bright lights instantly lit up the entire stadium, and then Raymond was completely stunned by the sight in front of him.
"Dear listeners, before we officially start today's broadcast, please allow to express my excitent: It's snowing in San Francisco!"
"Good morning, listeners. At 12:46 a.m. last night, San Francisco had a heavy snowfall. After a whole night of heavy snow, you can now see thick snow on the streets. This is the first heavy snow in San Francisco in 35 years. The entire city is covered in a blanket of white snow. The snow has slightly lessened, but it's still coming down."
"God, please forgive my emotional outburst, listeners. It's snowing in San Francisco! God! Are we finally going to have a white Christmas? If you haven't seen the snow yet, hurry up and pull back your curtains and look out the window. Amidst the red and green decorations, we can finally see the arrival of snow."
San Francisco, in southern California, has a typical marine climate. The four seasons are like spring, and the temperature is generally between 15 and 30 degrees Celsius. The average temperature in winter hovers around 10 degrees, and the coldest it gets is only 6 degrees. In contrast, the sumr is colder. Because of the ocean currents, the temperature difference between day and night is very distinct. In the middle of sumr in July, you can still experience temperatures below 10 degrees after dark. This is why Mark Twain once said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a sumr in San Francisco."
Because of this, San Francisco is a city where you can barely see snow. In the past 100 years, it has only snowed four tis, on December 11, 1932, January 15, 1952, January 21, 1962, and February 5, 1976. It had been 35 years since the last snowfall. If you go back further, it had been 69 years since it snowed in December.
In fact, for the past two weeks, the temperature and rain in San Francisco have been ssing with the weather. The city's weather forecast had predicted that it might snow, but it never did. To welco this unmissable snowfall, soone on the internet even created a "Is it snowing in San Francisco?" website to inform people of the latest changes at any ti and list the best places to watch the snow. Today, when people opened the website again, three big "Yes! Yes! Yes!" were flashing, and below them, a small snowman in a Christmas outfit was skating in a white world. Pushing open their doors and windows, people could actually see snowflakes falling from the sky, and the entire city was buzzing.
In fact, the snow on the ground was only a thin layer, about one to two centiters. It could be easily swept away to reveal the original ground, and it quietly lted into the mud as vehicles and people passed by. You could only see so snow on the roofs of cars and buildings. But people didn't care. The sky was still filled with rice-sized snowflakes. The hazy gray covered the entire world, and the whole city seed to have entered a Christmas atmosphere, becoming a microcosm in a white halo. And on the brick walls and car roofs that they could touch, they could find snow, and then... they started a snowball fight. Even the middle-aged n in suits couldn't help but smile, welcoming the first snow in 35 years with laughter and singing.
On the streets, people were running, laughing, and playing like children, opening their arms and mouths to try to taste the snowflakes. Their childish and innocent actions seed to make sense today. In Union Square, a large crowd of people gathered. An indie band was playing Christmas carols, and everyone was jumping and dancing happily. So people even ca out in short-sleeved shirts or pajamas, eager to join this carnival party.
A heavy snowfall made the entire city of San Francisco go into a frenzy. For most young people living in this city, this might be the first snow of their lives. Lu Ke was one of them. Before immigrating, Lu Ke's hotown was in the south and it never snowed. After immigrating, he lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles, two cities where it was impossible for it to snow. So, today was the first ti.
When he woke up early to train, Lu Ke saw snowflakes dancing in the sky. At first, it didn't feel real, and he continued to jog. But gradually, his emotions began to blossom. In the end, he couldn't hold back and started screaming and yelling like he was a child again, running and letting go to his heart's content. Even if it was just a thin layer of snow, this was the first ti in Lu Ke's life that he had seen real snowflakes. The feeling on his fingertips alone was enough to make him cheer. Obviously, he was not the only one who was so excited.
On the way to the training facility, he could see children cheering and playing on the side of the street. A joyful holiday atmosphere was in the air. After arriving at the training facility, he could see Logan, Marcus, and other teammates who had lived in California since they were young having a wild snowball fight. Then they saw Lu Ke and sward over, giving him a taste of what it was like to be hit by a face full of snow. It wasn't until the celebration was over that they gradually ca back to their senses. Were they about to have the first snow ga of their careers? This seed a little beyond their expectations.
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