Almost 60 years ago to the day, the Pro-Am at Pebble Beach got delayed—by snow.

Sixty years ago, on Jan. 22, 1962, the lead headline on the front page of the Monterey Peninsula Herald reads, “Peninsula Digs Out After The Big Snow.” Below it is a black-and-white picture of a snow-covered street in Carmel with a few kids and parents engaged in a snowball fight.

I only know this because since 2013, a house my good friend owns in Seaside, which I’ve lived in often over the last eight years – and which I’m living in now – has pages of that issue wallpapered on a door near the entryway.

How my friend came into possession of that newspaper is unclear, but whoever stashed it away decades ago must have recognized its historic nature, because over time, it’s dawned on me that it might be the wildest day of news in Monterey County history.

Second billing on the front page, to the left, is: “Robinson Jeffers, Carmel Poet, Dies.” After a brief summary of details – following a long illness, he died at 75 with his family by his side at Tor House in Carmel – the obituary dives into a deep critical analysis of his life’s work that bears repeating: “Throughout his long, creative life, Jeffers’ powers were stirred to their highest effort by his fundamental disgust for the rank and file of mankind. His most vivid images were rooted in ugliness and decay, in human conflict, in manifestations of sick minds and unbridled passions.”

Another notable thing about that news day: the Bing Crosby Pro-Am (now AT&T) was on, and the paper came out on a Monday.

Readers who made it to page 6 saw this headline: “Bob Hope’s Plane Hit By Lightning.”

Hope had been at the Crosby, as it was called back then, and 15 minutes into his flight out of Monterey, lightning struck the nose of the plane he was in with about three dozen other people. Hope told the Associated Press that the pilot said, “A strange thing just happened ladies and gentlemen. We were struck by lightning and we’re still flying.” (The plane diverted to San Francisco, and landed safely.)

On that same page is a headline with a vintage sci-fi vibe: “Storm Befuddles Weather Robot.” Reportedly, weather experts at the “Naval Air Facility” said conditions causing the weather were “so unusual as to defy prediction.”

Weather was the dominant theme of the news, and nearly every story touched on it: The lede for a story about the Crosby being delayed reads, “For the first time in its 21-year history, during which Bing Crosby and his friends on the Monterey Peninsula thought they had seen everything, the National Pro-Amatuer golf championship was snowed out.”

Next to that story on page 1 is the headline: “Biggest Snow In Memory,” and the story below (penned by Earl Hofeldt, in one of the few stories that had a byline in the issue) reads: “The snow, a disaster to golfing enthusiasts but a delight to thousands of other youngsters and adults, produced scenes never before seen in this area.

“A man skied in Monterey’s Monte Vista area. Snowmen and ice forts popped up on lawns all over the Peninsula. There was sledding on Los Laureles Grade. Two men got into an argument in a Seaside bar over how much snow had fallen. Ranchers on Mt. Toro and some other higher areas bewailed trespassers – but they couldn’t do much about it. The ‘trespassers’ were youngsters with sleds and people of all ages engaging in snowball fights.”

A lifelong Big Sur native declared they had never seen anything like it: “I have seen the country white before – right down to the ocean. But that was hail. This was real snow. We probably had two inches on the ground.”

The snow, which took both “robots” and forecasters by surprise, also compelled the National Geographic Society to issue a press release about science and data versus local weather forecasting, and it’s quoted in part: “Theoretical meteorologists who insist on absolute logic rarely make good forecasters, weathermen say.”

Six decades later, during which the denial of science remained a persistent strain in American life, the lead headlines locally on Jan. 22, 2022, were about a wildfire in Big Sur.