Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Snow that weighs too much

On the second day of winter snow, the phrase is 'snow that weighs too much.' Wikipedia has the many varieties from a to z - artificial snow through to zastrugi (snow surface features sculpted by wind into ridges and grooves).  There is even watermelon snow - a reddish/pink coloured snow that smells like watermelons, and is caused by a red-coloured green algae called Chlamydomonas nivalis.  These types of snow are mostly related to skiing.

For urban snow, the Boston Globe has defined the types of snow removal personalities.  This seems to make sense with types like the mediocre shoveler, the incrementalist, the libertarian, angry snow plower, perfectionist, child labourer, anti-shoveler,  procrastinator, the t-taking pedestrian (t being an abbreviation for transportation), the snow angel, and more.

Yesterday's snow quickly became slush.  How much does regular vs wet snow weigh?  For wet snow Monroe calculates: "Let's say wet snow would be equivalent to 1" of rain or 5" of snow, you would get a resulting 12.5 pounds per cubic foot, compared to light, fluffy snow at 5.2 pounds and a cubic foot of water at 62.4 pounds. 


So I guess we would avoid a comparison with a cubic foot of Magnolia blossoms - our picture of the day. 

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