STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (KDKA/AP) – A sewer plant helped create a winter wonderland for a 3-square-mile area in central Pennsylvania.

The National Weather Service in State College says a layer of dense fog mixed with condensation from a local sewer plant overnight Monday, creating a dusting of light snow in a small section east of State College.

The snow fell over roughly 3 square miles near the Nittany Mall.

The weather service calls the process a “microscale event” – too isolated to be captured by local weather reporting stations.

The dusting was a rare, if brief, winterscape for a region in the midst of an unseasonably warm and snowless fall.

In 2013, the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Plant in Shippingport caused a freak snowstorm. It left about an inch of the white stuff behind in parts of Allegheny and Beaver counties.

Experts said the steam from the power plant combined with the near-zero temperatures at the time to create the snow, which they called a rare event and pretty special sight.

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