Hoping to “bank” another victory in the annual SF Fire station holiday decorations contests, a Potrero Hill fire station hauled in 15 cubic yards of snow from the Sierra mountains to embellish their display and give local kids a real white Christmas.

The recent revival of the 1940s-era SF Fire station holiday decorations contest has had dozens of local fire department stations “stocking” up on holiday razzle-dazzle the last three years. And last year’s decoration contest winner was the department Bureau of Equipment (BOE) at 25th and Vermont Streets, which busted out a snow machine to blanket the competition.

Wednesday night was the official judging contest for this year’s affair, and the 10 stations competing dialed up their most festive flash to impress a panel of judges. And the Examiner reports that same Potrero Hill BOE hauled in two truckloads of snow from the Sierra Mountains to embellish their station’s snow globe scene.

The truckful of snow’s transport can be seen above. According to KTVU, the snow haul was handled by “The San Francisco Fire Department and the Teamsters Union, escorted by local law enforcement agencies.” (So exactly how much overtime is getting paid out here for all this?) The Examiner has the additional detail that “Members of the Teamsters filled two dump trucks with fresh snow early Wednesday morning and began the trek down the mountain. The caravan carrying the snow traveled over the Bay Bridge at about 7:30 a.m., complete with police escort.”

Regarding the first snow display in 2021, which was done artificially via snow machine, SFFD Captain and Public Information Officer Jonathan Baxter told KTVU,  "We wanted to figure out how to create opportunities for the public to get outside safely and have something cool to look at to share with their isolated pandemic pod if you will."

The video in the top left of the above embed shows that station has the snow machine going this year too. But clearly the timed “block party” structure of this year’s competition allowed the stations to really plan great community events, as the station says it also had “A SANTA DJ, a taco truck from the community, a community block party,” and a “snowball competition.”

But the frosty vibes seem to be snowballing to other fire stations too, as we see above that the Sansome Street Station 13 had some snow being generated as well.

Yet an unexpected development may have jingle-bell rocked Wednesday’s night’s decoration judging contests. At Station 35 beneath the Bay Bridge, which has fire boats, the SFFD Twitter says, “the Fireboat got a call for a rescue while judging.” The boat did in fact leave the station and perform the rescue during the contest hours, in full lit-up holiday regalia. So Station 35 is sure to end up on Santa’s (or someone’s) Nice list, and we’ll find out the winners of this contest on Friday, December 23.

Related: Photos: The Five Most Festive SF Fire Stations In the Holiday Decorating Contest [SFist]

Image: @SFFDPIO via Twitter