Abiola Ogungbenle’s First Snow: The Viral Photo from Hanover, PA

Arms wide, face turned up to the sky, grinning from ear to ear: Abiola Ogungbenle had waited months for this. On 8 December 2013 the 25-year-old from Nigeria saw snow fall for the first time, in Hanover, Pennsylvania, and his housemate Joseph Fryer captured the moment in a photo that soon travelled around the world.

Abiola Ogungbenle’s first snow

Ogungbenle had moved to Hanover in August 2013 to join his wife, and he had been eagerly waiting for his first winter snowfall ever since. When the flakes finally came, he asked Fryer to take his picture so he could share the moment with his family back home in Nigeria.

Fryer, a photographer who runs The Digital Lightbox, had been heading outside to photograph the weather anyway. “It was like a child seeing snow for the first time,” he told The Huffington Post. After about half an hour of playing, the novelty met reality. “Oh man, it’s cold!” Ogungbenle said.

How the photo went viral

Fryer shared the picture on Facebook, and a friend posted it to Reddit, where it took off. By 18 December the Pennsylvania station FOX43 was reporting on it, and The Huffington Post followed two days later. Speaking to FOX43, Fryer summed up why: “To meet somebody from a whole other country who has never seen snow at all except for on the TV and then seeing him experience it, really warmed my heart.”

The picture works because it is so simple. There is no landmark, no dramatic scenery, only falling snow and a man who could not be happier to stand in it.

Why snow is new to most Nigerians

Nigeria lies entirely in the tropics, and its climate is shaped by rain, not frost. The south has a tropical monsoon climate, with more than 4,000 mm of rain a year in the Niger Delta, while the north is hot and semi-arid, with Maiduguri reaching 48 °C. From about December to March the harmattan, a dry, dusty wind from the Sahara, brings haze, low humidity and lower temperatures.

Even the coolest parts of the country stay mild. The Jos Plateau sits at about 16–25 °C through the year, the highest point, Chappal Waddi in Taraba State, reaches 2,419 m, and the lowest temperature on record, at Potiskum, is 2.8 °C. For most Nigerians snow is something seen on television, exactly as Fryer described.

Hanover, Pennsylvania

Hanover is a borough of about 16,400 people in York County, southern Pennsylvania. It was laid out in 1763, when Richard McAllister divided his farm into lots, and it is known as the Snack Food Capital of the World, home to Snyder’s of Hanover since 1905 and Utz since 1921. On 30 June 1863 Union and Confederate cavalry clashed in its streets in the Battle of Hanover, which delayed J.E.B. Stuart on his way to Gettysburg.

For one new resident, that December snowfall was the best welcome the town could give.

Related reading

• Kayden’s First Rain: A Small Discovery at the Doorstep
• Mike Taylor’s Maine Aurora Photography and a Change of Direction
• Cairo-Area Snow Reports in December 2013: Separating the Claims
• The December 2013 Eastern Mediterranean Winter Storm: A Full Photo Account

Sources