Maybe they should have let a writer come up with the name for this phenomenon...
Last edited:
-
Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!
The Polar Vortex
- Thread starter A. E. Lowan
- Start date
Noma Galway
Archmage
I like the last one best
Zero Angel
Auror
Those are amusing. It's a pretty old term though, isn't it? It's just being told to everyone this year because of its effect on America.
TheCatandTheBat
Acolyte
Hahaha, that cracked me up. Thanks for the laugh!
"Snow Whiteout and the Seven Degrees Below Zero" .... XD *wipes away a tear*
"Snow Whiteout and the Seven Degrees Below Zero" .... XD *wipes away a tear*
Myth WeaverHmmm...
I keep coming across vague internet rumors of a protracted 'zero and below' deep freeze afflicting the lower 48.
Meanwhile, in what should be the frozen north, we have temps pushing 40F and rain, conditions that are expected to persist a while.
-0-0-0-0-
ICE
I grew up here in the north, on a homestead fronting a large lake, pretty much right at the edge of the wilderness so to speak. I spent much of my youthful free time in the winter on skates, skies, and snow machines in the winter. Well...not so much the skates...see below...
Now, the bulk of my experience is with lakes, not rivers and streams.
Still...usually the lakes freeze over before the first real snow hits, which means there is a span of a couple days to a couple weeks when it is feasible to strap on the ice skates and go gliding across the ice...or more accurately wobbling a ways before falling, often painfully. After that, the snow comes down, and stays down, so skating ain't really feasible.
You'd think a frozen lake would be quiet. You'd think wrong. Ice cracks, and when it does, it sounds like thunder...or maybe a gunshot. A few times in my youth I had the joy of actually seeing the cracks form. They're fast, and some of them can extend for a thousand yards or more. But with well frozen lakes, you don't have to worry about falling through the ice, though what comes from beneath is an issue throughout the winter - water. In places, the water beneath the ice will escape to the surface through these cracks, spread out in an uneven mass, and refreeze. This is termed 'overflow'.
Now, before the snow hits, overflow is naught but lumpy ice, easily steered around. Once the snow is down, though, the effect is more insidious, especially later on when the snow is thicker, acting as insulation. In those conditions, the water will turn the snow to slop, often leaving a normal seeming crust up top. But walk across it, you will suddenly sink, and you will leave behind wet footprints - and likely have cold feet to boot. This also applies to those on skies and snow-machines; one minutes your zipping along firm packed snow, the next you're bogged down in slop. Usually, with lakes there's no danger of falling through the ice, but it can be highly annoying. Later on, the now exposed slope will freeze solid, leaving tracks of all sorts preserved in stasis until spring.
As the lakes tend to freeze before the snow arrives, they also tend to resist thawing until days or weeks after the snow has fled. The snow condenses and crystalizes, giving the ice a rough glittery appearance. If brave or foolish, you can walk on the ice in this state, though it be far from safe. Then the ice starts going away: first a gap of a few yards along one shore, then a wider gap, and then one day fully half the ice will simply vanish, to be replaced a day or three later by rapidly melting slabs. These slabs resemble many soda bottles melted together, and when they collide in the first waves of spring, they make music, sounding like many tinkling bells. It's quite a lovely sound. But a day or two after that, they are gone.
Snow, too, takes on ice like characteristics as winter wears on. Wetter snow and natural compacting conspire to create a hard, thick surface crust over a deep, soft layer below. Towards spring, even somebody as heavy and ungainly as I can walk for a dozen or so paces across this crust, barely leaving a track...until reaching a hidden weak spot and sinking well past the knee with the next step.
I keep coming across vague internet rumors of a protracted 'zero and below' deep freeze afflicting the lower 48.
Meanwhile, in what should be the frozen north, we have temps pushing 40F and rain, conditions that are expected to persist a while.
-0-0-0-0-
ICE
I grew up here in the north, on a homestead fronting a large lake, pretty much right at the edge of the wilderness so to speak. I spent much of my youthful free time in the winter on skates, skies, and snow machines in the winter. Well...not so much the skates...see below...
Now, the bulk of my experience is with lakes, not rivers and streams.
Still...usually the lakes freeze over before the first real snow hits, which means there is a span of a couple days to a couple weeks when it is feasible to strap on the ice skates and go gliding across the ice...or more accurately wobbling a ways before falling, often painfully. After that, the snow comes down, and stays down, so skating ain't really feasible.
You'd think a frozen lake would be quiet. You'd think wrong. Ice cracks, and when it does, it sounds like thunder...or maybe a gunshot. A few times in my youth I had the joy of actually seeing the cracks form. They're fast, and some of them can extend for a thousand yards or more. But with well frozen lakes, you don't have to worry about falling through the ice, though what comes from beneath is an issue throughout the winter - water. In places, the water beneath the ice will escape to the surface through these cracks, spread out in an uneven mass, and refreeze. This is termed 'overflow'.
Now, before the snow hits, overflow is naught but lumpy ice, easily steered around. Once the snow is down, though, the effect is more insidious, especially later on when the snow is thicker, acting as insulation. In those conditions, the water will turn the snow to slop, often leaving a normal seeming crust up top. But walk across it, you will suddenly sink, and you will leave behind wet footprints - and likely have cold feet to boot. This also applies to those on skies and snow-machines; one minutes your zipping along firm packed snow, the next you're bogged down in slop. Usually, with lakes there's no danger of falling through the ice, but it can be highly annoying. Later on, the now exposed slope will freeze solid, leaving tracks of all sorts preserved in stasis until spring.
As the lakes tend to freeze before the snow arrives, they also tend to resist thawing until days or weeks after the snow has fled. The snow condenses and crystalizes, giving the ice a rough glittery appearance. If brave or foolish, you can walk on the ice in this state, though it be far from safe. Then the ice starts going away: first a gap of a few yards along one shore, then a wider gap, and then one day fully half the ice will simply vanish, to be replaced a day or three later by rapidly melting slabs. These slabs resemble many soda bottles melted together, and when they collide in the first waves of spring, they make music, sounding like many tinkling bells. It's quite a lovely sound. But a day or two after that, they are gone.
Snow, too, takes on ice like characteristics as winter wears on. Wetter snow and natural compacting conspire to create a hard, thick surface crust over a deep, soft layer below. Towards spring, even somebody as heavy and ungainly as I can walk for a dozen or so paces across this crust, barely leaving a track...until reaching a hidden weak spot and sinking well past the knee with the next step.
It's dark when I go to work in the morning. When I return - call it seven hours later, the sun is already most of the way to the horizon. But yesterday, I got back a bit earlier, plus the temps were on the warm side (40F...maybe 5C?), and instead of overcast sky's and rain, the sky was blue. A most unusual combination this time of year - clear sky's usually means temps of around 0F. So, it being so nice and all, I took a walk down to the bluff.
Nature in Winter, at least in these parts, is pretty close to monochromatic - grey overhead, spruce trees so dark a shade of green they might as well be black, or at least dark grey, and brownish tan tree trunks appearing as lighter shades of grey. Add in the white snow and black roads, and all too often you feel like you've stepped into an old black and white movie. The blue sky is a bit an exception.
I used to walk much more often in the winter than I do these days. Partly its getting older, and partly its because the routes I favored have become claimed by subdivisions or fenced off by various government agencies. You don't just set off into the snow and trudge merrily away (well, you can, but...) Snow, especially the deeper snow without much of a crust up top, is tough to walk in. You sink, maybe partway to your knees, or maybe over them, with each step you take. And the more you walk in deeper snow, the wetter your pants become...and the colder your feet. To avoid this, the basic trick is to let somebody else break trail, and then step in their foot prints. You still get wet, and there are balance issues, but you don't get as wet. But me, back then, I mostly stamped out my own trails:
...one foot down directly in front of the other, heel to toe, stamping hard, compacting the snow. Keep that up till you've reached your destination, then on the return, stamp out another heel to toe track adjoining the first one. Then go back and forth again, stamping out the seams, and maybe a third time to make the track the width of three or even four boot prints wide. Done right, you can walk that in shoes and not get your feet wet, though you might still end up with wet pant legs from brushing against the side of the trench - and that's basically what this is - a more or less knee deep trench through the snow.
Snow depending, you can sink a fair bit even with snow-shoes - and they are a bit clumsy to walk in. Never did much of that myself.
Most of the time with skies, you sink just a hair - but skies are also awkward. Going up a hill with skies on can be a pain...and maybe an exercise in frustration. Likewise, going down a hill while wearing skies...that can be dangerous, even if its a straight run. Toss in a curve or three, especially a sharp curve, and you're asking to crash. Sharp curves are a pain even on level terrain. Another overlooked annoyance with skies is the way certain types of snow will cling to the undersides, even if waxed. You reach a point where you're not so much gliding, as walking with what feels like forty pounds of snow on your feet.
But anyhow, I walked to the bluff, and stared at the muddy waters of the inlet, and the haphazard line of washed ashore ice bergs. They didn't look like icebergs; they were so completely coated with mud and sand they looked like greyish black boulders ranging from about the size of an armchair up to about vehicle big. Most were rounded. In past excursions through the years, I've seen some bigger than house trailers, forming narrow mazes between the bluff and the water. They come and go with the tides, now arranged one way, now another. The thought has occurred to me this might make a good scene for a story: a person stumbling between these giant blocks of dirty ice, with more folks gathered around a bonfire between the slabs.
Been going over my memories of frozen rivers, ice damns, and lost valleys as of late.
Might get into that in another post, if anybody is interested.
Nature in Winter, at least in these parts, is pretty close to monochromatic - grey overhead, spruce trees so dark a shade of green they might as well be black, or at least dark grey, and brownish tan tree trunks appearing as lighter shades of grey. Add in the white snow and black roads, and all too often you feel like you've stepped into an old black and white movie. The blue sky is a bit an exception.
I used to walk much more often in the winter than I do these days. Partly its getting older, and partly its because the routes I favored have become claimed by subdivisions or fenced off by various government agencies. You don't just set off into the snow and trudge merrily away (well, you can, but...) Snow, especially the deeper snow without much of a crust up top, is tough to walk in. You sink, maybe partway to your knees, or maybe over them, with each step you take. And the more you walk in deeper snow, the wetter your pants become...and the colder your feet. To avoid this, the basic trick is to let somebody else break trail, and then step in their foot prints. You still get wet, and there are balance issues, but you don't get as wet. But me, back then, I mostly stamped out my own trails:
...one foot down directly in front of the other, heel to toe, stamping hard, compacting the snow. Keep that up till you've reached your destination, then on the return, stamp out another heel to toe track adjoining the first one. Then go back and forth again, stamping out the seams, and maybe a third time to make the track the width of three or even four boot prints wide. Done right, you can walk that in shoes and not get your feet wet, though you might still end up with wet pant legs from brushing against the side of the trench - and that's basically what this is - a more or less knee deep trench through the snow.
Snow depending, you can sink a fair bit even with snow-shoes - and they are a bit clumsy to walk in. Never did much of that myself.
Most of the time with skies, you sink just a hair - but skies are also awkward. Going up a hill with skies on can be a pain...and maybe an exercise in frustration. Likewise, going down a hill while wearing skies...that can be dangerous, even if its a straight run. Toss in a curve or three, especially a sharp curve, and you're asking to crash. Sharp curves are a pain even on level terrain. Another overlooked annoyance with skies is the way certain types of snow will cling to the undersides, even if waxed. You reach a point where you're not so much gliding, as walking with what feels like forty pounds of snow on your feet.
But anyhow, I walked to the bluff, and stared at the muddy waters of the inlet, and the haphazard line of washed ashore ice bergs. They didn't look like icebergs; they were so completely coated with mud and sand they looked like greyish black boulders ranging from about the size of an armchair up to about vehicle big. Most were rounded. In past excursions through the years, I've seen some bigger than house trailers, forming narrow mazes between the bluff and the water. They come and go with the tides, now arranged one way, now another. The thought has occurred to me this might make a good scene for a story: a person stumbling between these giant blocks of dirty ice, with more folks gathered around a bonfire between the slabs.
Been going over my memories of frozen rivers, ice damns, and lost valleys as of late.
Might get into that in another post, if anybody is interested.
Last edited: