Jump to navigation
White Rain & Cold Sand
R. Alex Whitlock
The weather here in Idaho has just gotten downright bizarre.
First, when I was driving back from a job interview, there were white drops of rain. Not all of them were white, but some of them were. I started chalking it up to pollution, but then I realized that I'm not in Houston anymore. Unfortunately, I couldn't inspect further because the whiteness of the raindrops disappeared as soon as it touched the ground.
By the time the evening rolled around, it all got even stranger. Now all of the raindrops were white. Not only that, but there was some sort of build-up forming on the ground and on objects. It was kinda like sand. I looked around for a dust storm, but I saw none. After feeling the substance, I realized that white the texture was similar to sand, it was cold and had a tendency to miraculously transform in to water.
Man, I'm never going to get used to things up here...
Observations
Snow?! In April?!
You're kidding right?
Nope. :) Up here, we can and will have freezes in every month of the year. The past 10 months here haven't disappointed on that score. That being said, the day before it snowed, it was almost 80. If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. Dear lovely Alex is going to be hit with snowballs until he acknowledges that this "white rain" is actually snow and not just a northern conspiracy like he wants to think it is. . . :D
Bah. I need palm trees and water that would rather convert to gas form than solid form. Snow's nice for a mountain vacation, maybe get some skiing in; but snow in April is just crossing the line! :)
Alex,
this is called "Snow." It's a perfectly normal phenomenon whereby raindrops that are cold, convert into crystalline ice.
You know, ice - the stuff water turns into when it's been in the freezer too long.
Nothing to be concerned about. You'll figure it out soon enough.
Add an Observation
Comment spam is an ongoing problems that we're trying to address. Previously we required people to create accounts and log in. I am thankful to say that is no longer the case. We're giving Captcha another try and are playing around with a text-based Q&A variant of Captcha. So bear with us as we try to figure out how to best get a handle ont he problem. Please note that any comment on a post more than 30 days old will go into the moderation queue, where I will get to it when I can which could be once a week.
