716 Days | Scene Through the Lens

As much as we newspaper photographers like to complain about being sent out to make “wild art” or weather photos, most of us do enjoy the change of seasons - and that first snowfall.

For us here in the Philadelphia region, it has almost been two years since we’ve had any measurable snow. The city’s official measuring station at the airport recorded 3.3 inches of accumulating snow on Tuesday last week, ending a 716-day snow-less streak.

We enthusiastically went out and photographed it.

That storm was followed by another, with even more snow just three days later.

After a few days off I was back out looking for weather on Sunday. It was plenty of cold, but the sun was shining through a bright blue sky, melting and freezing the ice and snow on rooftops into dripping icicles — these in Cherry Hill, N.J.

Certainly most of the snow will be all gone soon, but as The Inquirer’s Anthony R. Wood says, “that’s all part of nature’s magical vanishing act.”

Since 1998, a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color: