Wet Enough For Ya?

Here we are, late February.  Just about everyone is fed up with winter, and this one has been something a bit unusual.  Over the past week, we went from "oh, hey, snow may be coming" to "SNOWMAGEDDON!!" and back down to "well, that's a lot of shoveling."  The local news I watch has been pointing out that our snow totals, to date, are running about double what a normal winter is.  Which is weird, but somewhat helpful.

On the average winter, as a kid, we used to average about five feet of snow.  Yeah, sounds like a lot, but it really isn't, at least if you're used to it.  Then there's the details which tend to make it a little easier to deal with.  If you've been around snow like I have, you know that the five-foot number isn't all at once, happens over about eight months, and it's measured at the airport.  Gravity also helps to reduce that number.

Huh?  Well, here goes.  In Minnesota, the only month out of the year in which we have not historically recorded measurable snow somewhere within the state's borders is July.  That's right.  We can get snow 11 months of the year.  Snow in May, June, and August is rare.  A few years ago we got absolutely clobbered from, a May snowstorm.  September snow rarely sticks through, but we can be covered in snow from October through mid-April - that's a fairly normal winter.  We've also had winters where we've had "brown Christmas" - no that's not a description of someone's least favorite gift, but what the ground looks like.  Within the last 15 years, we've had a brown Christmas where we didn't get measurable snow until late December.

Typically, the earlier we get snow, the less likely it will stick around for the entire winter.  We did get a bit of snow early this winter, and it looked like an easy one until we got smacked shortly after Christmas.  We received enough snow to put the piles next to my back door sidewalk up to my chest.  The worst part was the type of snow.  Yes, I know, Eskimos have some thirty names for snow.  Around here, we sort of shorten that a bit.  There's good old snow - just your average snowstorm - then we get a little more finicky.  The earlier or later in the winter the storm hits, the heavier the snow is likely to be.  That is, there's much more water content, the snowflakes tend to be larger individually, and when they fall they tend to compress - which is the part gravity "helps" with.  On those occasions, it's more "heart attack snow".  That is, it's very heavy to move, which means people can over-exert, and really hurt themselves.  

This past week, however, the snow was extremely fine.  The individual flakes themselves were small, which usually happens with mid-winter storms, where there's extreme cold, less wind, making the snow smaller.  Huh?  Well, I suppose it helps knowing how all of this forms in the clouds.

Anything that falls out of a cloud has exceeded the cloud's capacity to keep it up in the air.  Duh, I know, but here's the thing - every cloud you see in the sky is made out of moisture.  The reason it's up there, and the reason many clouds you see have flat bottoms is because it is at that exact height over ground that the amount of moisture in the air reaches the exact temperature where it goes from transparent to visible.  Oh, yeah - we're right down to one of my family's favorite sayings.  

My son can get into these moods where he will argue anything.  You can ask him to get something that's been sitting on the couch, he'll go into the living room, come back and complain he can't find it.  Well, that's because we have a couch with a broken hide-a-bed in it, and a second, shorter couch which we know is typically referred to as a "love seat" which is a chair for two people.  But he won't look there if he's in a mood.  This is where my wife says he's in a mood to argue whether the sky is blue.  

And it is because of the water content up in the atmosphere.  Otherwise known as the humidity.  So the point of this digression is that water is always up there.  In the case of clouds, it's a little more water which sometimes ends up having to fall.  This is precipitation.  Now we get into the reason why it's falling.  Obviously, gravity plays a part, but what defines the type of precipitation is the temperature and amount of energy in the weather.  

Spring storms typically get pretty dangerous in our neck of the woods because we can get very warm air flowing over cold ground, and it's the temperature difference which can spin up big storms.  A blanket of warm air can displace the cooler air down low, which makes things difficult, because that warm air wants to rise - and the colder, heavier air wants to be on the bottom.  This is how you end up with tornadoes.  

It also defines what ends up on the ground.  Because way up in the atmosphere, you get moisture floating over the ground, eventually it manages to collect into drops.  If there's sufficient energy, those drops will fall and end up getting blown back skyward with warmer air moving up.  And the drops may collect into larger drops.  Eventually, they get so heavy they have to fall.

If you're lucky, those drops fall through cold air which cause them to freeze and continue to fall as snowflakes.  Or they can fall through slightly warmer air causing some of them to continue to fall as snowflakes, some to fall as rain.  Which is where we get freezing rain.  Which differs from sleet in that freezing rain tends not to freeze until it hits the ground.  Which means you get a nice coating of ice on top of the snow - if you have any.  If not, you get the entire world turned into a skating rink.  

Sleet is where the precipitation falls as drops of ice.  This is the early cousin to hail - which requires a whole lot more energy, because that water freezes on the way down, then gets blasted back up, another layer of moisture grows that drop, which freezes on, and this repeats multiple times.  

Snow is a much lower energy event in that the water typically starts down and turns into individual flakes.  This week's snow was extremely fine, which is it's own problem.  When you're shoveling snow, the best practice to avoid overall injury is to move the stuff as little as possible.  Obviously you have a space - a sidewalk, a driveway, or whatever - where you need the snow to get out of the way.  And that means pile it up next to the spot.  

Fine snow tends not to stay where you put it because it doesn't tend to interlock like larger, wetter flakes do.  So if you look at the pile of snow, you'll find piles sloped at about 30-45 degrees.  It's the heavy, wetter stuff which makes those piles or spots where you find the almost vertical edges.  That comes from tightly interlocked, or compacted, piles.  Which can happen over time, if you can wait.  Which I couldn't for most of this week's storm.  I have a dog who needs to get out two to three times a day to go to the bathroom, and we've conditioned her and ourselves for those trips to happen first thing most mornings, and then again another trip around 9 pm every night.  Yes, she will get out around lunch time and usually again around 5 pm, depending on the weather, our daily schedules, and who's where.  My wife's job currently requires her to be in her corporate offices in St. Paul twice a week.  On those days, the dog doesn't always get her regular 11 am visit to "the other side" - we tend to avoid the word "outside" because she knows it and will bark until you get her there.  This developed when Leo required pills to be given every 12 hours.  He would get one before my wife came to bed around 11 pm each evening, and again at 11 am.  Now Cheyanne is used to activity happening at 11 am. 

I tend not to take my lunches until later in the day, so I'm often busy until 1 or 2 pm.  

But back to snow, I have to keep that back sidewalk clear because it's where she goes out.  I also try to keep a spot with less snow on it because she tends to like to do her business where her butt isn't in the snow.  Before this latest storm I'd kept a patch about seven feet long by five feet wide, plus a 3 foot wide path off the sidewalk, into the snow, around one of our outside tables.  It was a little more variety to the standard "get out to pee" routine.  It wasn't cleared to the ground, there was about 3" of stuff left.  Until about 4 days before this storm hit, when we'd gotten down to mostly bare ground due to our late arrival January thaw.  

When this storm arrived, it came in two rounds, the first dropping about four inches overnight Tuesday, followed by the whopper on Wednesday night.  A majority of the schools in the southern half of the state did close or change to "distance learning" rather than require buses to get down narrowed streets or unplowed rural roads.

Some early forecasts promised 18 or more inches of snow in the second round, which was somewhat terrifying.  In the end, I got around 16 inches of snow total.  The official total at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport was around 13, but they're in an odd spot, the weather can miss the airport.  Local TV reported we got 16.9" from the second round here.  So be it.  

Bottom line?  I kept most of the snow moving, so my sidewalk is nearly clear to the road.  There's a bit of work needing to be done right at the end of the sidewalk because the plows never plow to the curb, they stop about 18" short.  So there's that, but I have a clear path.

Of course, back in January was the time for most folks to worry about flood insurance.  I am given to understand, he said, basing this next part on news reports, that most homeowner's insurance tends not to include flood coverage because most houses are far enough out of the expected flood plain to not be worried about it.  When you get close to six feet of snow before our normally heaviest month of snow - March - you know there's going to be some extremely wet areas.

This winter is a bit unusual in that we started with a pretty heavy blanket up first.  This is actually helpful.  Because here's where we get more science.  Cold comes each year because of the season.  Cold air can cause the ground to freeze, which is what can harm and kill plants.  The trick, however, is how deep that freeze is.  With a winter without a great deal of early snow, the ground can freeze pretty solidly through three or four feet.  Which is why your water pipes are buried deeper than that, as are your foundations and other things.  

Because freezing causes things to expand.  Like Ice.  If you fill the ice cube tray in your freezer to the top of the dividers, then put it in the freezer, when the ice comes out, it will far exceed the tops of those dividers.  And this is what causes things like frost heaves and other events which damage roads, sidewalks, or plants.  A quick, thick blanket of snow early in the season will insulate the ground.  Yes, you'll still have a bit of frozen ground, but it may only be the first four or six inches.  Which means that, as the rest of the environment warms up, so will the ground.

Which makes a huge difference, because frozen ground tends to let water flow over it.  Warmer ground, however, can absorb that water.  Which will be fantastic this spring, because we were again in a bit of a drought last summer and fall.  This has been going on for a few years, and yes, I'm aware that the southwestern portion of the country is also experiencing a drought.  I see the news reports about the reservoirs and problems in Vegas for water.  At least once a month there's some whackdoodle plan concocted by the folks in those areas proposing dipshit ideas like diverting the Mississippi River to water the southwest, or that we ship water from our 10,000 lakes to Arizona. 

And I fall back on the rather small idea that it's the small minds that try to change their environment to support their lifestyle, it is the smarter mind that changes their lifestyle to survive the environment.  Or avoids the hostile environment altogether.  I'm sure these are beautiful places, I get it, but to attempt agriculture in a desert is fairly stupid.  Better to grow the products where the water is than build an entire industry where you can't get the required materials.  

But that's just the other digression from what may be a pretty bad spring for flooding.  March is where we'll find out if we're going to get clobbered or if we're going to have an easy spring.  I hope we see a slow warm up.  Low to mid thirties for a while will help reduce the snow we have, while a quick flash warmup into the 60s would be nice weather, but will come with flooding and plenty of damage.  

Nothing is going to make the twenty foot tall pile of snow across the street from me on the little narrow strip of unpaved ground next to the school parking lot absorb all that water.  The usual figure of fallen snow is that ten inches of snow can come from one inch of water.  So if you look around and see a two foot-plus snow pack on the ground, that means the ground below is going to have to absorb 2 1/2" of water.  If it can.  And a 20 foot tall pile of snow easily will contain two feet of water.  Fortunately and unfortunately, most of that water will drain across the street and over to the storm drain in front of my house, and from there into the Minnesota river a few miles north of where I live.  Which means it will eventually reach the Mississippi and add to that torrent flowing south in a few weeks.

We can hope, anyway.  Assuming spring comes in calmly.