Last night I ventured out into the blizzard to experience the weather, and to get some pictures of the Christmas lights in the park. I dressed in the same way I did when I went out in the blizzard in Midland, South Dakota in 1969. I wore three pair of pants, a sweatshirt, a sweater, two coats, and two layers of hats. It was overkill. I ended up over-heating, because the wind/temperature combination was similar to last week when Lief and I rode our bicycles to work, wearing only one sweatshirt under my rain/wind shell. The temperature then was -7.7C with average wind speed of 15 mph. Last night the temperature was only -7.4 and the wind was blowing at about 20 mph. In contrast, the Midland blizzard temperature was -20F and the wind was 30mph or more. I lasted only five minutes before I had to retreat into Grandpa Noble's house.
This photo of the lights was taken at 1/3 second. I was braced for the photo, but the wind moved me around. The yellow lights on the ground were actually buried in the snowdrift. Blowing snow is not visible at this shutter speed.
This morning there were snow drifts all over the yard. We started with about two inches of snow, but the drifts piled it up to six inches or more in some places, and cleaned it off to bare ground in other places.
At about 2:00AM we got a light sprinkling of freezing rain that put a hard glaze on the surface. So the normally soft, fluffy snow is crunchy on the surface.
2 comments:
I love lights under the snow, it is so beautiful.
Sounds like you had very similar weather to us last night. My shins and ankles got fairly roughed up from walking around in that thin crust of ice over powder.
I've tried to photograph the drifts to show how the wind and powder were interacting. However, your terrain and lighting captures this better than I have yet to manage I believe.
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