The Drive West

First of all, I would like to thank Renee for taking care of my house and cats while I am gone.  I left Grand Marais Thursday morning and arrived in Quartzsite, AZ last night around 5:00 p.m.  I have only been here once before and do not really remember my way around.  As I was driving around this small town, I made a turn that I thought was taking me toward the camping area.  I ended up back on the highway by mistake and had to drive down around eight miles to the next exit to turn around.  I laughed, although I wanted to cry since that is all I needed after driving for three days.  The route that the GPS took me ended up being 2,345 miles.  The middle day of driving was the most:  I logged almost 1,000 miles which is the most I have ever driven in one day.  I had to get here by January 12th since some of my dealers are closing up their booths today.

Some of the sedimentary rock cuts along I80 going through Iowa are awesome.

Sunset the second day somewhere in the Texas panhandle along I40.

 

Yesterday morning I crossed over into Arizona.

 



Petrified wood....

Mount Humphreys:  the tallest point in Arizona at 12,637 feet (3,852 m).

 

Moon rising....

Then Quartzsite.  I was starving and the only place walking distance from Rice Ranch, where I am camping, was a beer and burger place called Beer Belly's.  It worked.

 

This morning I received an email from Mark, one of my customers.  I delivered his 12 agate panels just before Christmas.  Thanks, Mark, for sending the photos.

 

 

 

Deer and Deep Snow

When I was getting ready for my trip out west, I noticed deer walking up my driveway.  The snow is so deep that they are able to reach apples on trees that never fell last fall.  It was comical because every time they pulled on an apple, snow fell off the branches onto their heads.

 

A few years ago snow drifted like crazy on the south side of my house.  It is almost as good this year, and we still have three months of winter!

This is the drifted corner, looking out the window of my laundry room.  I roof raked this section two days ago.  One blizzard and the snow is hanging off the roof even worse than it was before I roof raked.

My eagle statues, which are over three feet tall, cannot even be seen in the photo below.   In my yard I would estimate that I have four feet of snow on the level as well as drifts up to 10 feet tall.

A Yooper Winter Problem

The blizzard we had the other night piled even more snow in Grand Marais.  The next morning I realized that my toilets were not flushing right.  I did research on the internet and I called a retired plumber who lives in town.  We guessed that the snow may have plugged the plumbing vent pipe on my roof.  I snowshoed around back of my house and I could barely see the top of the pipe.  I figured that snow may have blown into the pipe, so I decided I had to climb on the roof the free it up.  Thanks to friend, Renee, who came over to give encouragement and call 911 if  need be.  I was not sure whether walking on the snow, which on top of a metal roof, would cause the snow to slide off.  It didn't and I was able to get up a ladder onto the roof.  Sure enough -- the top of the pipe was clogged with around six inches of snow and ice.

 

The extreme cold outside combined with lake effect snow causes beautiful patterns on some of my windows.

The temperature outside my window this morning.  Other places in the U.P. are -25.

The snow is really piling up.  Below is a picture on the non drifted side of my sun porch.  The panels are each two feet tall so the snow depth is around four feet.

Another Winter Blizzard

Before I get to the photos I took today, I want to relay information I learned today regarding some of my computer issues.  Again my day did not go as planned when my brand new Quickbooks software froze up.  I was concerned that I would lose hours of work.  I was kept on hold for almost an hour, but the wait was worth it.  Although the technical support guy was India, he did a great job.  He found two issues that were possibly causing Quickbooks to not work.

The first one had to do with some software I downloaded a few weeks ago.  When I had previous issues, I researched on the Internet potential software programs that I could use to prevent malware from invading my computer.  The tech support guy said that the anti-malware software I ended up buying was actually malware software.  He explained that some of the technical review sites on the internet are fake review sites that steer you toward the malicious software.  I allowed him access to my computer, which he controlled from half way around the world.  He removed the malicious software as well as some other non-useful softwares.  He also changed several settings and fixed my internet explorer, which has not worked for three weeks.  They guy was terrific.  He worked on my computer for almost an hour -- at no charge!  Now my computer seems to be working better than it has for weeks.

Now that I am thick into the accounting task, I have not made time to get outside.  Besides, today it was very windy with near blizzard conditions at times.  Tonight it has been even worse.  I can hear the wind blowing against the side of my house.  It is hard to get motivated to go out in this kind of weather. 

So from my front window (looking north), I snapped the photo below at sunrise.  You can see the lake effect clouds out over Lake Superior catching the rays of the rising sun.

I was going to try to get into the museum today.  It is hard to tell, but the snow bank along the road is four feet tall.  There is also 3-4 feet in front of the door.  I'll go back tomorrow with a shovel.

The photo below shows the house next to the museum.  There is still no report of what the owner is going to do with the building.

The fish shanties are back.  A couple of brave soles were way out -- too close to the channel in my opinion.

 

A couple of the shanties are located next to the marina.  Note that the dredging equipment is still here.  

 

It is not that the photo of Lonesome Point below is out of focus -- there were blizzard conditions out across the bay.

The photo below shows clumps of snow on my apple trees the line my driveway.  Not shown are the deer tracks under the trees.  Now that the snow is deep, the deer are able to reach some of the apples that never fell from the trees.

Microscopic Images of Snow

In honor of the cold snowy winter that much of the U.S. are "enjoying," I decided to search the internet for microscopic photos of snow.

Snow is precipitation in the form of flakes or ice crystals that fall from clouds.  Snowflakes come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Types that fall in the form of a round sphere due to melting and refreezing, rather than a flake, are known as hail, ice pellets or snow grains. 

To form, there must be a nucleus around which the water freezes.  Sometimes supercooled water droplets in a cloud freeze into a lattice, that then serves as the nucleus around which more droplets freeze.  Dust, biologic particles, and silver iodide (delivered via planes to seed clouds) can also serve as the nucleation centers.  The ice crystals gather up the abundant water vapor to grow and increase in mass.  When they are big enough, gravity takes over and the crystals fall through the atmosphere.  Since these ice crystals have an electrostatic charge, they tend to collide and stick together to form clusters, or aggregates. Once they clump together, they graduate to become snowflakes.  Although  individual ice crystals are clear, the clumped crystal snowflakes scatter and reflect the light.  Since the crystal facets and hollows/imperfections of various parts of the clump reflect the light into all of the spectrum colors which then blend together, snow on the ground appears white.

Guinness World Records list the world's largest snowflakes as those of January 1887 at Fort Keogh, Montana; allegedly one measured 15 inches wide (38 cm) wide.

The shape of the snowflake is determined broadly by the temperature and humidity at which it is formed:
--Thin, flat planar crystals form between 32 and 27 F (0 to -3 C)
--Needle and hollow column crystals form between 27 and 18 F (-3 to -8 C)
--Flat intricate dendritic crystals form between 18 and -8 F ( -8 to -22 C)
--A variety of complex crystals form below -8 F (-22 C)

In Grand Marais most of winter precipitation falls as lake effect snow.  This type of snow does not form intricate crystals or snow flakes.  It is characterized by rapidly growing crystals that are either formless spheres or elongated masses.

The world record for the highest seasonal total snowfall was measured in the United States at Mount Baker Ski Area, outside of the town Bellingham, Washington during the 1998–1999 season. Mount Baker received 1,140 inches (2,896 cm) of snow.

Cites:
http://www.mazm.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/microscope-snow01.jpg
http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2010/10/26/06_ontario6_custom-a1d3d9a0e9e47e64a3bfac8d91b3fcd1f4d2e75e-s6-c30.jpg
http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2010/10/26/03_kiruna1_custom-5143d4c45be0c6a8da5f8ece7337b1d4efc177cd-s6-c30.jpg
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqdgh8nDu31qhyly2o1_500.jpg
http://wallpoper.com/images/00/42/67/18/canada-microscopic_00426718.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow

More Snow for New Years

Happy new years to everyone.  In Grand Marais this morning it is just above zero with continuing lake effect snow.  My friend, Renee, stopped over and we snowshoed around my property.  I also shoveled some of the snow hanging from my roof.  Although I have a path, you wouldn't know it right now.  There is so much snow in the apple trees that it was like an obstacle course.  We had to duck under tree branches.  I'll have to spend some time clearing the path.

 

Although I have a path, you wouldn't know it right now.  There is so much snow in the apple trees that it was like an obstacle course.  We had to duck under tree branches.  I'll have to spend some time clearing the path.

Again this year some of the apples never fell from the trees.

 

I checked the webpage (http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/) to see how the ice cover is doing on Lake Superior.  Given how cold it has been, I am surprised there isn't even more ice.

Then I checked the current snow depth.  Because the lake effect bands have been setting up to dump more snow along the shoreline, rather than inland where the normal snow accumulation zone is, we have between 30 and 40 inches on the ground.