SNOW
PAGES
"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow"
Whose woods
these are I think I know. His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
Robert Frost
Snow snow faster, ally ally aster...
That's what we used to say.
I remember a White Christmas in the mid 1990's, when a group of friends and I stayed in 'Red House', towards the bottom of the road in Staithes, North Yorkshire. We arrived on the 23rd of December, and parked the car at the bottom of the incredibly steep hill going down from the terraces at the top to the 'Cod and Lobster' pub at the bottom. An hour or so later it started to snow, and it didn't really stop for 48 hours, which meant we were stuck in the village for the week, which was fine as we had a cafe, several pubs (we won the pub quiz too..) and a coal bunker full of coal....
But since then, we haven't seen much of the white stuff. There was the Jan 31st fall in 2003 (the one that caused all the problems on the M11, and which gave me a day off work...) and now some in December 2005 which is getting people worried.
So what is snow ?
How uncommon is it ?
A fantastic site on the various aspects of SNOW is to be found at CALTECH in the USA. Click the big link below to go to a great resource with some lovely images and leaflets to download. It has pictures of the various types of snow crystals, with the DENDRITES being the one we're familiar with. It also considers the question as to whether any 2 snow flakes can be identical.
It goes into the classification of different types of snow (apparently there are several, the Nakaya one is quite clear), along with images of each one.
You can also download a FIELD GUIDE TO FALLING SNOW in either WORD or PDF format. I recommend you get a copy of this publication.
Before Christmas 2004, one of the books that topped the bestseller lists was 'Mr. Snow' by Roger Hargreaves.
Click to enlarge. Evocative image of central Dundee February 2005 by Val Vannet.
"Watch out where the huskies go. Don't you eat that yellow snow"
Frank Zappa