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Philly just set a July weather record — for snow

The National Weather Service says the fierce thunderstorm that passed over the city Sunday afternoon produced a small bit of hail.

FILE - Hail stones. Okay, we didn't get nearly that much, but the National Weather Service reported hail fell Sunday, July 14, and counted it as a trace amount of snow for the day. That broke a record of 0.0 inches of snow stretching to 1870.
FILE - Hail stones. Okay, we didn't get nearly that much, but the National Weather Service reported hail fell Sunday, July 14, and counted it as a trace amount of snow for the day. That broke a record of 0.0 inches of snow stretching to 1870.Read moreAl Maglio / AP

Philadelphia saw a long-held record fall Sunday as it was being cooked by this summer’s abnormally high heat.

For snow.

OK, it’s a bit of a stretch, but the National Weather Service says that the intense thunderstorm that passed over the city Sunday afternoon produced a small bit of hail.

For meteorologists, this counts as frozen precipitation, which gets lumped in with snow for daily tallies.

Previously, July 14 had never seen “snow” stretching back to 1870. So the trace amount of hail was recorded as snow in official data logs, breaking the record of 0.0 inches of snow for the day.

But, given that this third heat wave of the summer is especially hot, with a possible high of 100 degrees Tuesday, even a few plops of “wooder ice” falling from the sky counts as relief.