I just got off the phone with a friend in Utah….
She said that since early this morning the snow has been nearly waist high and is still falling. The temperature is dropping below zero and the freezing wind is increasing. Her husband has done nothing but look through the kitchen window the entire day. She says that if it gets much worse, she may have to let him in.
What’s your opinion on this?
Enjoy the article.
Lawrence Rinke
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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I am writing to you today from inside one of nature's bona fide wonders: a good old New England nor'easter. I hadn't planned to comment on this blizzard; I tend to ignore them whenever possible. New Englanders are used to them. But I was awakened this morning by the snow insistently thumping my window, demanding my attention, insisting, lordly in its sway that I gaze out and make my obeisance to awe and wonder.
And so I shall.
First, the facts.
What is snow anyway?
Millions of people, their lives intertwined with this seasonal commodity which ebbs and flows, would, when asked... hem and haw, embarrassed by their ignorance of something so powerful, so regularly omnipresent, so, well, obvious. "I'm not really sure," they'd say -- myself among 'em -- "I just know it when I see it."
The Farmer's Almanac to the rescue.
My dictionary says snow is ice crystal flakes: water vapor in the atmosphere that has frozen into ice crystals and falls to the ground in the form of flakes. This is, well, adequate, good enough; it's better to seek out the experts at the Farmer's Almanac (published first by Benjamin Franklin in 1732. ) Snow, somehow, seems more real in the country, its sinews more apparent, its destructive power the more on view and genuinely regarded, with picturesque Currier and Ives panoramas at every glance. No wonder America loves these images of its earliest and most enchanting self, first published in 1813, when a view was verily a fine prospect indeed.
Here's what the Farmer's Almanac says,
"Snow is formed from water vapors in the cold clouds that have condensed into ice crystals. Ice crystals fasten onto a dust speck. One crystal attaches to another forming a snowflake. Once the snowflake is heavy enough, it falls from the cloud. A snowflake is either a single ice crystal or many crystals.The size of a snowflake is determined by how many ice crystals join together.The tops of clouds must be below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 degrees Celsius in order for snowfall to occur.Snow can fall from any layered cloud that is cold enough."
"Snow’s effect on the ground."
" Snow accumulated on the ground helps keep bulbs and plant roots (beneath the ground) from freezing in frigid weather.As soft snowflakes pile on top of one another, pockets of air are left between them. This air helps protect seeds, bulbs and roots from freezing beneath the soil in winter.In spring when the snow begins to melt, some snow soaks into the earth to water the soil, while other melted snow replenishes streams, lakes and rivers."
Now, that's a definition to be proud of. And I bet you, like me, hardly knew a whit of this. Still, it is good to know the brave little crocuses already peeping shoots above the ground will not be harmed. They are the vanguard of spring, and they cheer us every time they ascend to the sun and their brief tenure as bits of joy in the mud.
5:55 am Eastern
It is not quite six a.m. now and the hegemony of snow is absolute. Or almost so. The snow plows are already at their work; their promise of relief and liberty at hand. Their noise must be fearsome for, snug and warm, I hear them as they go about their work. They bear names like Ariens, Toro, Craftsman, Husqvarna, Troy-Bilt, MTD Yard Machines, and Honda. You can tell as well as I that many of these are foreign names, and so with every flake, American money leaks to foreign shores.
The snow plows are manned by happy crews of determined folk who relish their work. Soon, they will be found in taverns citywide sharing brews and tales of the Big One which will lose nothing in the telling. They are proud of the work which pulls them from snug beds into the Big Machines whose power, growing now, will soon efface that of snow itself. Commuters who come later, grumbling, will complain about where the fruit of these machines has been left.
New England's poets knew their snow
John Greenleaf Whittier (born 1807) wrote a best-seller in 1866 entitled Snowbound: A Winter Idyl. Easy to understand, its simple imagery and paean to nature do not satisfy our jaded tastes and so, sadly, this idyllic pastoral goes unread today.
Sadder still is the fate of "The Cross of Snow" (1879) by my near neighbor on Brattle Street, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His poem, gut wrenching, is not so much about the snow itself as about the snow covering the grave of his long-dead, fervently adored wife. I have been in the room she died, where there is love and pain, producing reflections almost too poignant to be written:
"In the long, sleepless watches of the night ,A gentle face--the face of one long dead-- Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died, and soul more white Never through martyrdom of fire was led To its repose; nor can in books be read The legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died."
But this report must not end on such a note of mourning, no matter how haunting and elegiac. Thus we end instead with the sage of Concord, Massachusetts, Ralph Waldo Emerson who in "The Snow Storm" (published 1841) said this:
"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of Storm." *** I am now in that tumultuous privacy of Storm, where outside the elements contend, heavy, portentous, disruptive ephemeral, though they do not know it. Soon this will pass."
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com. Check out Xtreme Traffic Arbitrage -> http://www.ActionEqualsProfit.com/?rd=wl9hnQf6
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