Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Magic Snow Balls

Every so often, here in the frozen north, conditions are just right for a curious phenomenon (I suggest clicking on the pictures for a larger view).


Nope, we weren't attempting to create winter lawn bowling with snowballs. This phenomenon can sometimes occur when we get a deep snowfall in cool temperatures, followed by a rise in temperature to just above freezing, accompanied by a strong warm wind. As you might imagine, these conditions do not occur with much regularity. The last time I remember seeing this happen, I was probably around 13 or 14 and it happened at night. It was also much larger in scale. So we woke up the next day to fields of snow covered in snowballs ranging from around baseball size up to perhaps volleyball size, all with a long trail marking their creation. I wish I had a picture from back then, but these were taken just a couple of days ago.


Pretty cool, huh?

6 comments:

Teresa said...

That is so cool! Usually if I see something like that there's a mouse in the middle that my dog was playing with.

Jerry said...

Lol.

LindaM said...

Wow! Thanks for sharing this!

Jerry said...

You're quite welcome!

Walter Jeffries said...

Huh! We've seen that too. Ours are generally rolling down hill but maybe it is the wind that gets them started before gravity takes over. We get a lot of wind. And gravity. :)

WeekendFarmer said...

cool : )

How have you been? Hope all goes well.