WINTER: “This is a crazy winter,” writes Pat Franco. Sir, we agree!
“It reminds me of 60 years ago when I was in the Army at Fort Benning, Ga. It was like summer til Christmas, til we came back from leave,” Pat says. “January and February of 1958 were 12 below zero for two whole months.”
In Georgia. Yikes.
“I had a picture I sent home from the Columbus, Ga., newspaper of a spray fountain that finally froze over. It looked like a crystal sculpture.”
We’re tired of the coats, boots, scarves, gloves, hats, slush, dirty cars and everything else. Winter never seems so bad before Christmas, no matter the weather. After Christmas, it’s a waiting game for spring for some of us.
What do you think? Snow or no?
Bob Rusiewski was also thinking about winters past after reading our recent columns on hard winters.
He writes, “I remember the blizzard of January 29, 1997. I was living in St. Marys and saw snow drifts up to the roofs of homes in certain locations in town and remember going to church that weekend and walking the cleared sidewalks where the snow was waist deep on either side.
“I walked around town in pure amazement. I haven’t seen anything like that in the area since.”
Speaking of winter, this kind of weather can be awe-inspiring and interesting, and learning the secrets about snow is no exception, Metro Creative Graphics Inc. states.
Snow forms when water vapor in the atmosphere freezes into ice crystals. Snow falls as snowflakes, which come in a variety of shapes.
However, according to Mental Floss, snow also can precipitate as graupel or sleet. Graupel are pellets of opaque ice particles that fall through freezing cloud droplets. They are not the same as sleet, which are drops of rain that freeze into small, translucent balls of ice.
Snowflakes are generally small and accumulate to form visible snow coverings. However, snowflakes can be large. The largest snowflake on record was reported to be 15 inches across and eight inches thick. According to “The Guinness Book of World Records,” this giant snowflake was discovered at Fort Keogh, Montana, on January 28, 1887.
Although it appears white, snow is actually clear and colorless. The National Snow and Ice Data Center says the complex structure and many facets of snow crystals results in visible light being reflected. Light is absorbed uniformly over the wavelengths of visible light, which gives snow its white appearance.
So, there we have it. Winter can be beautiful –– and fascinating.
