Wordless Wednesday: A Foot of Snow

Wordless Wednesday: Snow Day and Ghost Stories

Avalanche!

The thing I didn't realize about covering the south facing roof with solar panels,is that the slick surface doesn't often collect much snow.

But when you get a lot of snow, it piles up in large sheets, then inches down like a glacier.  It forms a snow overhang, which sprouts beautiful icicles.

 And, randomly, in a thundering rush, all that snow breaks free and sheets off the roof in an enormous avalanche!

This is the side of our neighbor's house, about 25 feet (7 meters) away after it was hit by part of our avalanche.


And this is the rest of our (very narrow) back yard.

This is why we don't allow anyone in the back after a heavy snow until we are sure that all the snow is off the solar panels.

That particular avalanche was only the first few feet of the snow on the roof!

Kids In Snow!

Snow ice cream!  You take a bowl of fresh snow and mix in a can of condensed milk. Easy peasy and yum!

Snow Way!

Yesterday noon

3:30 (1 inch)

5:00 (2 inches, 5 cm)

6:30 (4 inches, 10 cm: enough to sled in!)

This morning 7:30 (13 inches, 33 cm)

9:00 (didn't check)

                      








 


     

And we are almost halfway through the storm!

 Did you know that these little juncos are called snowbirds? 

Now I know why!


It's a lot of snow (with a lot more coming), but great cocoa weather!




I'll update tomorrow with "final" levels, but we are supposed to get the actual blizzard (50 mph, 80 kmph wind with heavy snow) this afternoon, so the wind driven drifting may affect our measurements.

Gospel Dessert: Fourth Sunday

 The Gospel this week was the story of the man born blind.  Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud, anoints the man's eyes with the mud and then tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam.

I always had the mental picture of the pool as being nearby.  It turns out it was a bit more than half a mile away - which explains why, after he was healed, he didn't immediately see Jesus.

Klenda made our Gospel dessert, a "mud pie." Less muddy than some other years, but still delicious!


Also on Sunday, God sent us an early April Fool's joke when our rainy day took a turn for the snowy.

Here we have snow on our snow drops!

We probably have a few hundred snow drops, which Oob still amusingly calls rain drops.  Yesterday, they were definitely snow drops!

Speaking of Winter

 A whole lot of what has been keeping me busy has been weather.

We had ice. 

And then about 8 inches of snow.

The Emperor had off school since snow in even small amounts tends to have a paralyzing effect in the DC area.

 This is partly because the people who plow the roads haven't had a lot of experience with snow, and partly because the people who use the roads haven't had a lot of experience with snow.

 At any rate, the plow drivers didn't realize that they needed to plow the corners of the intersections to prevent the intersections from becoming slushy narrow passages.

And then we got a cold snap which turned the slush to rock solid ice.

And then we got another 4 or 5 inches of heavy wet snow.

This hasn't been a problem for us, per se (unless you count the cycle of finding/recovering/drying hats, coats, scarves, gloves, boots, socks, pants, and snow pants each time the kids go outside).

We haven't really needed to go places because all the schools were shut down.  We also knew the storms were coming so we stocked up at the library.  Some people grab milk and toilet paper, but we go for the important stuff!

Generally snow, even large amounts of snow, disappears within three days, but the cold continued for a week, and we are only melting off now.

Alas, our plowers inadvertently dammed up the storm drains, so we are getting a lot of flooding on the roads, which of course, turns to ice each night.  I am thinking that all snow plowers should be required to intern in Minnesota.

I do love snow, but even I am starting to yearn for some green!  It's nice, actually, I think I will appreciate spring much more this year than I did after the past two mild winters.

And I'm really ready for it to be Lent!

Icy, I See

Very round, like an air filled balloon

Yes, it has been very cold here! We don't usually see temperatures in the single digits here, but, this winter, we've had two stretches in the single digits as well as weeks where it doesn't get above freezing.

I have high hopes that this will kill off a lot of bugs.

The cold weather has been fun for many reasons, not the least of which has been having snow on the ground for weeks! Usually, even when it does snow, the snow is gone within three days.

When you have something unusual, see what you can do that you can't usually do.

I used to have to try to think this way, but the Zoomlians come by it naturally.

the white spot on top was an air bubble

Zorg wanted to try freezing a water balloon.  It was interesting: it looked like it was filled with air - it didn't flatten out the way water balloons do in summer.

We put it outside at around 12 degrees F in the afternoon, and left it overnight at 6 F (-14C).  It was out about 18 hours.

It seemed solid enough, so we tried popping it.  That was harder than it looked.

 The balloon had frozen to the ice and was hard to peel off.

Once we had it started, we saw this beautiful crystal sphere, streaked with bubbles.  Suddenly, the center started pulsing rhythmically, like a heart!

The balloon had been lying on snow, and the snow from below and the ice forming above had insulated a large pocket of water and kept it from freezing.  It was gushing out of a hole in the balloon, pausing as a vacuum formed within, then gushing out again.

The sunlight on the balloon lit up the movement of the water in a way that was both eerie and beautiful.

The water seeped into the balloon shaped depression

Once the water had drained away, Zorg picked up the hemisphere of ice.

What a beautiful and fascinating experiment!

We want to repeat this when we need a bowl of ice for candles or a really cool party dish!

Snow Day!

A few days ago, wishing for snow, we started cutting out paper snowflakes.

We all love paper snowflakes - they are one of the few crafts that everyone likes to do at every age. 

The oldest kids fold and cut their own, middle kids fold some and cut some extra that I have folded, and the very youngest kids draw the design they want me to cut.

We like to do tiny ones to hang from the ceiling, and big ones to tape to the windows.  This year, Klenda asked what would happen if we tried the Big Roll of Paper.

She gave it a try and got a beautiful giant snowflake!  You can make the giant ones really intricate!

 Last night we had a beautiful sunset with lacy clouds blowing in from the west.

And today we have 4 inches of snow and counting!  They say we might get 8 inches, or even 10!!