Super Bowls and snow | Scene Through the Lens

Before it was a 24-hour thing, “news cycle” for a press photographer meant the cyclical nature of the assignments we covered week after week, month after month, year after year, trying not to make the same picture over and over again. First days of school, elections, anniversaries, and every newspaper photographer’s favorite, the call for “weather art.”

The suburbs of Philadelphia got some snow last week, but in the city it only rained. This could be one of the region’s most snowless winters since the government first started keeping track 139 years ago.

It would be real convenient here - now that the Eagles are headed to the Super Bowl - to say that the last time Philadelphia had a winter without snow they defeated Tom Brady and the Patriots and got to hoist the Lombardi Trophy for the first time in franchise history.

But that’s not the case.

So, without any other way to segue, here is a staff photo gallery Philly sports fans celebrating last night:

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:

» SEE MORE: Archived columns and Twenty years of a photo column