What a difference one day makes.
Two days ago it took me more than 15 minutes for me to drag a single load of wood from the fence at the back of the pasture to the woodpile. That was just the one leg and did not include the deadhead leg outbound nor the time to load and unload the sled.
Yesterday it took me 12:36 for a round trip starting with an empty sled at the woodpile, dragging 300 yards to the back fence, filling it and dragging it back and unloading it. I even took about 20 seconds to take a picture of a juvenile Black Locust twig.
The difference is how snow reacts after it is stirred or compressed and then left to rest. Fluffy snow turns stiff. My mental image is that the lacy snowflakes that are resting tip-to-tip get crushed and the "flats" where they touch vapor-weld together overnight.
The same thing happens with the snow thrown up by snow plows. If you jump right on it and start shoveling, the snow might be dense but it is not hard. If you leave it overnight, it is hard AND heavy.
The point is that the musher of the sled (musher and dog, in my case) needs to run a fairly heavy load over the fluffy snow to start the process. That can be a chore.
Yes I agree with your theory on snow , especially light fluffy/powder snow . I use a leaf blower to get the snow off my vehicles before it sets up hard . World of difference , even works on porches and sidewalks , unless the snow comes down wet onto a warmer surface .
ReplyDeleteMy neighbor also use's his leaf blower on his gutter's every fall. Waits till it's been dry for a couple weeks and then he can get the gutter's squeaky clean.
DeleteBreaking the trail is always tough. Its why we take turns taking point.
ReplyDeleteNo snow here, but high grass slogging - we have experience.
Years ago one of the train companies in Britain was roundly mocked because it blamed some operational problems on "the wrong sort of snow". But I thought the mockers were mistaken. Maybe they were the sort of people who had always been ferried to school in cars. Those of us who had plodded 'midst snow and ice knew perfectly well that there were different sorts of snow.
ReplyDeleteI was listening to this just last night. Bud Leavitt, "Woods and Waters" Maine Public Television 1987. Old time logging in Maine, and to your point, ice roads. Initial video quality is poor but improves. Turn up the sound.
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Oh yeah. Up until this winter, we work like dogs to get as much snow cleared as possible, on the first day. Depending on temperatures and conditions, it would set up hard and heavy by the next day.
ReplyDeleteWe got 16” last week, but it’s been dry and very cold since then, so we took a few days to get some of the outlier clearing done.
Southern NH
Looks like a smaller but bitterly cold salvo coming our way this weekend friend.
Delete-7 before windchill expected. A few inches of snow.
Snows an annoyance, ice is a problem, especially when hidden under an inch or so of snow.
I don't bounce like I used too.
We are in the frozen, thawed, frozen snow stage with patches of ice on the driveway. I told my wife when I went to drag the trash cans out to the street, if I was not back in a half hour to send help. School has been closed for 2 weeks because the school bus parking lot is a skating rink.
ReplyDeleteSnow, like ice, liquifies under pressure. The steam-water-ice phase diagrams have a pressure dimension not usually represented. Why ice skates work.
ReplyDeleteYour activities two days ago performed liquid phase sintering on the snow flakes under foot.
My daughter in law attended a short winter survival course where they drove up into the mountains to the deep snow. Each had a small snow shovel. In pairs they built a big mound of untouched snow, waited a half hour for snow to harden then started digging a low tunnel into the bottom of the hardened pile. Then they tunnelled upwards making a chamber / room inside the higher half of the pile. The snow room was toasty warm as long as the floor of the room was higher than the top of the open doorway.
ReplyDeleteThe farther north you go in Canada the greater the number of words for snow. In the Pacific NW we have many more words for types of rain.