It was Christmas Eve, 2015, and, in Heritage, California, it was about as cold as it ever got. The mercury was hovering in the mid-thirties and a cold, freezing rain, driven by an artic wind from a low-pressure system over Oregon, was falling all over the area. There were reports that snow was falling as low as one thousand feet in the nearby Sierra Nevada foothills, dusting the exclusive Heritage suburbs of Cypress Hills and Andiron. There were even cautious predictions that as the temperature continued to drop in the late evening and early morning hours that snow might fall in Heritage itself. If true, this would be an extremely rare occurrence. At an average elevation of forty feet, Heritage had only received measurable snowfall six times in recorded history. And never had it snowed on Christmas.