What Are the Intricacies of Snow Flurries and Logging Tales?

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The discussion revolves around observations and experiences with recent snow flurries, highlighting the unique behavior of snowflakes and their impact on daily life, particularly driving conditions. Participants note that even light snow can cause significant traffic disruptions, prompting questions about why people panic at the sight of snowflakes. Various locations are mentioned, with some sharing their winter experiences, including heavy snowfall, freezing rain, and the challenges of navigating icy roads. There is a humorous exchange about the peculiarities of snowflakes and their motion, with references to scientific concepts like Brownian motion and discussions about using technology to study snowflake dynamics. The conversation also touches on personal anecdotes related to winter weather and the joys and frustrations it brings, culminating in a light-hearted tone about the unpredictability of winter conditions.
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I just took a look out the window and saw what seemed to be confetti. But then I noticed that no two were alike so it had to be snow flurries. I paid close attention to one of them that seemed in no hurry to go anywhere. It would sink a few inches, then rise, move a little to the left, but not making any real progress. Then a gust came and blew it off to who knows where. I can't find it now. I wonder if there are scientists who study the motion of flurries. They give you some idea of the wind patterns in a micro kind of way. Perhaps there are better materials that are used for this purpose. Don't know. Mainly, my concern is the fact that even a single one of these pieces of water can cause a traffic jam that reaches from Bivalve to Ong's Hat. I hope I will be together with my family tonight. How's the weather by your way?
 
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jimmysnyder said:
Mainly, my concern is the fact that even a single one of these pieces of water can cause a traffic jam that reaches from Bivalve to Ong's Hat. I hope I will be together with my family tonight. How's the weather by your way?

:smile: Yeah, we started getting flurries yesterday, and they're still occurring on and off today. There's only a patchy dusting of white on the grass, nothing sticking to roads anywhere, yet, so true about the traffic getting all clogged up over it! Why is it that people see a snowflake and suddenly panic about driving? If it were accumulating, it would make sense, but not what we have.

Anyway, it made last night the perfect night to head out and get my groceries and a few more Christmas gifts for coworkers. Between being a Monday night, a little wind, and a hint of snowflakes (what tried to stick was immediately blown off the roads anyway), there was hardly anyone out. :biggrin:
 
How's the weather by your way?
Much the same. I'm north of Jimmy, and it's just cold. We had a couple of cm of snow the other day, which was followed by freezing rain. We woke to cars covered in ice.
 
I'd like to once again brag that I have snow up to and beyond my knees. :)

I love Winter.
 
We had a blast of winter snow the other day. Snowed all of one day, then the next freezing rain which turned into poured rain. Yesterday the wind, 45 mph gusts, tore down branches, causeing power failures.
Jeez I love my generator.
 
I'm up here in Edmonton Alberta, and have had snow off and on for almost a month now.

Good thing about Alberta is, if you don't like the weather, you just have to wait half an hour.
 
Down here, we study how much water people think they see on the ground.
 
Supposed to be a sunny day in the 60s for us :smile:
 
I've had to shovel and snow-blow about a foot of "flurries" over the last couple of days.

snow.jpg
 
  • #10
:bugeye: There go your habaneros.
 
  • #11
Math Jeans said:
:bugeye: There go your habaneros.
They've been safely in jars for months. The Sunday before last, I had to chop several inches deep in frozen dirt to plant my garlic - waited a bit too long on that one.
 
  • #12
turbo-1 said:
They've been safely in jars for months. The Sunday before last, I had to chop several inches deep in frozen dirt to plant my garlic - waited a bit too long on that one.

That's why I live in Phoenix. The worst we get every year is four days of frost. :-p
 
  • #13
Monday and yesterday, we had 25 cm (10 inches) with strong winds. Early yesterday morning, the bus I take to work got stuck going up a hill. After the driver managed to rock it out, he backed down the hill, backed around a corner, and continued backing up for about another 300 metres, until he found a street suitable for navigation.

On my trip to work, I saw four cars and two other city buses completely stuck.

And we were lucky. Many other places near here got hit harder.
 
  • #14
It's a mess here today. Not really a lot of snow yet. Less than 2 inches to clean off the driveway when I left this morning, but the roads are a mess. It's not enough to provide traction, just enough to get slushy and refreeze and turn the mountain roads slick. Even so, I didn't think road conditions were that bad, although it seems enough other people did to make it take an hour to drive 5 miles this morning. I saw some student walking from the student apartments toward campus, and was going to offer a ride, then realized he would get there before I would at the rate traffic was not moving.

There's an alternative route I can take, but when I got to the intersection where I could turn off, I noticed that someone was stuck at the TOP of the first big hill going that way, smack in the middle of the road. How do you get stuck at the TOP of a hill? So, neither route was going to move, and all I could do was sit and wait. Lots of little fender benders along the way were the problem...people follow too close here.
 
  • #15
turbo-1 said:
I've had to shovel and snow-blow about a foot of "flurries" over the last couple of days.
:approve:Now that's funny. I'm satisfied to remove a single snowflake from my walk, but the one I want to get at is always burried under a zillion companions.
 
  • #16
Moonbear said:
It's not enough to provide traction, just enough to get slushy and refreeze and turn the mountain roads slick.
I had the impression you lived in central Jersey. The only mountains I know are the purple ones in that song. For instance, Haddon Heights gets its name from the fact that it is the highest point along the 60 miles between Atlantic City and Philadelphia. 60 feet above sea level.

Another flurry storm today. I hope it keeps up, but it'll probably come down. Today's flakes are a lot smaller than yesterday's. It's absolutely Darwinian. They're probably denser too. Because although some of them waft upwards from time to time, there is a stronger downward trend than before. There are more of them though, I would guess the total volume to be about the same as yesterday. If natural selection continues in this fashion, eventually we will get an infinity of flakes, each of diameter zero.

Getting home last night was no picnic. I sympathize with those who must drive through hazardous conditions, but here along the sunny byways of the People's Republic of Northern South Jersey, there was NO SNOW. Why can't we all just get along?
 
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  • #17
jimmysnyder said:
I had the impression you lived in central Jersey.

Come and listen to a story about a gal named Moon
A poor Mountaineer, barely could get some food at noon
Then one day she found the MountainLair
And up on the grill was some sizzlin' fair
 
  • #18
George Jones said:
Come and listen to a story about a gal named Moon
A poor Mountaineer, barely could get some food at noon
Then one day she found the MountainLair
And up on the grill was some sizzlin' fair
:smile: That was great!
 
  • #19
jimmysnyder said:
:approve:Now that's funny. I'm satisfied to remove a single snowflake from my walk, but the one I want to get at is always burried under a zillion companions.

:smile: I just shoveled and salted my driveway, and even with the salt down, it's getting another coating of snow already. :frown: It doesn't feel so cold that the salt should be insufficient, but maybe it hasn't dissolved enough yet to coat enough of the drive to do more than melt small patches here and there.
 
  • #20
George Jones said:
Come and listen to a story about a gal named Moon
A poor Mountaineer, barely could get some food at noon
Then one day she found the MountainLair
And up on the grill was some sizzlin' fair

:smile: Excellent! I take it you've been to WVU, or know people who have, that you are familiar with the Mountain Lair? :biggrin:

Yeah, I'm originally from Jersey, but had the good sense to get out! :biggrin: :-p
 
  • #21
Moonbear said:
Yeah, I'm originally from Jersey, but had the good sense to get out! :biggrin: :-p
What a place! So glad I wasn't born there/have family there so I can stay away. My most memorable time in NJ was in Trenton, around midnight one summer day in 1969. I was there to visit a girlfriend in Levittown, PA, and though I had hitch-hiked most of the way, by the time I got to NYC I was way behind schedule, and got a bus-ride to the Penn Central station in Trenton. There was a VERY busy bar across the street from the station, and not a white face in sight. A very flashy-dressed black guy was sitting on a bench in front of the station. I hopped into the phone booth and called my girl-friend and told her that I was at the train station (she and her older sister were going to pick me up) and she asked me what station. I hollered to the guy on the bench "What train station is this?" and he said "Penn Central! It's the onliest one!" I told my girlfriend "Penn Central! It's the onliest one!" and he laughed. When I got off the phone he called me over and we sat there talking about "the Man" cruising in the white Caddy limo and other traffic out there. He tried to set me up with a "date" with a very pretty lady named Darlene, which I politely declined, and after about 1/2 hour a Bonneville cruised by. He jumped up and said "Holy sh*t! That's a whole car-ful of white p***y!" "Get your sh*t and get on the curb and get ready to jump!" The car came around again and my girlfriend and 3 older sisters were in it. They stopped with squealing tires, threw open the rear passenger-side door and hollered "Quick! Get in!"

As we sped away, I looked back at my new friend and he was busting a gut laughing and slapping his legs. The next morning, my girlfriend's father scolded me for making his little girls go to such a dangerous place to pick me up. Who knew? I grew up in Maine, and would hitch-hike around with my 12-string and a back-pack visiting friends.
 
  • #22
Moonbear said:
I take it you've been to WVU, or know people who have, that you are familiar with the Mountain Lair? :biggrin:

I consumed far more strombolis from sbarro in the Mountain Lair than any sane person would.
 
  • #23
I wonder if there are scientists who study the motion of flurries. They give you some idea of the wind patterns in a micro kind of way

I think it's generally accepted as Brownian motion with drift.

The idea of a "piece of water" is a little weird
 
  • #24
Office_Shredder said:
The idea of a "piece of water" is a little weird
I lifted that one from my daughter. When she was a toddler, she once asked me for a piece of water.
 
  • #25
Moonbear said:
Yeah, I'm originally from Jersey, but had the good sense to get out!
Now why would anyone leave a state that is so convenient to NY, PA, and DE?
 
  • #26
Office_Shredder said:
I think it's generally accepted as Brownian motion with drift.
I hadn't thought of it that way, but it's true. The motion of the flakes is ultimately determined by the sum of the impulses it receives from the molecules hitting it, along with a general downward drift. So I went out to track the micro wind patterns in a cubic meter of air. I started by tracking the molecules in the air and counting the individual hits as they bounced from flake to flake. This proved difficult and I soon tired of it. Then I reverted to watching the flakes themselves. Unfortunately, just as I got caught up in the wind-tossed life of a flake, a gust would take it away from me and I was overwhelmed by the sense of loss. I would focus on another, but you know how it is with snowflakes. Next, I gedanked about the following experiment. Place two film (not video) cameras at right angles to each other so that they cover the same volume of air. Their shutters should be synchronized somehow so that each frame from one camera can be matched to a frame from the other. Film for about a minute. Then see if you can identify the individual flakes from each camera. If you can, you will no longer need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
 
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  • #27
jimmysnyder said:
I hadn't thought of it that way, but it's true. The motion of the flakes is ultimately determined by the sum of the impulses it receives from the molecules hitting it, along with a general downward drift. So I went out to track the micro wind patterns in a cubic meter of air. I started by tracking the molecules in the air and counting the individual hits as they bounced from flake to flake. This proved difficult and I soon tired of it. Then I reverted to watching the flakes themselves. Unfortunately, just as I got caught up in the wind-tossed life of a flake, a gust would take it away from me and I was overwhelmed by the sense of loss. I would focus on another, but you know how it is with snowflakes. Next, I gedanked about the following experiment. Place two film (not video) cameras at right angles to each other so that they cover the same volume of air. Their shutters should be synchronized somehow so that each frame from one camera can be matched to a frame from the other. Film for about a minute. Then see if you can identify the individual flakes from each camera. If you can, you will no longer need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Or use a laser doppler anemometer.
 
  • #28
Astronuc said:
Or use a laser doppler anemometer.
Wow, I had one of these bad boys under a pile of old newspapers in the basement because I didn't know what it was. So I googled it. Here's what I found:

The Institute for Advanced Snowflake Studies said:
Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA) is a technology used to measure velocities of flows or more specifically of small particles in flows.

http://www.nat.vu.nl/envphysexp/REAL%20Experiments/LDA%20exp/LDA.html"

Well if that doesn't satisfy my curiosity, I don't know what it doesn't do. A little more googling reveals the answer to the OP's ponderism:

OP said:
I wonder if there are scientists who study the motion of flurries.
Yes.
 
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  • #29
Alrighty then. I dusted off the LDA and aimed it at my backyard. These laser jobs are much easier to use than the old hand crank ones. My results are as follows:

400 to 500 kph; no flakes
300 to 400 kph; no flakes
200 to 300 kph; no flakes
100 to 200 kph; no flakes
0 to 100 kph; 35425 flakes
-100 to 0 kph; 1 flake

I don't know what to make of it. I used histograms, pie charts, line graphs, bar graphs, you name it, but I'm getting nowhere. However, with a standard deviation like this one, you know I'm onto something.
 
  • #30
jimmysnyder said:
Alrighty then. I dusted off the LDA and aimed it at my backyard. These laser jobs are much easier to use than the old hand crank ones. My results are as follows:

400 to 500 kph; no flakes
300 to 400 kph; no flakes
200 to 300 kph; no flakes
100 to 200 kph; no flakes
0 to 100 kph; 35425 flakes
-100 to 0 kph; 1 flake

I don't know what to make of it. I used histograms, pie charts, line graphs, bar graphs, you name it, but I'm getting nowhere. However, with a standard deviation like this one, you know I'm onto something.
Now if you compare the LDA with the video cameras, you'd have a great experiment for next years Science Fair. It's going to be tough though to beat a cure for tuberculosis.
 
  • #31
Moonbear said:
:smile: Excellent! I take it you've been to WVU, or know people who have, that you are familiar with the Mountain Lair? :biggrin:

Yeah, I'm originally from Jersey, but had the good sense to get out! :biggrin: :-p
Just looked up WVU, and I must say you've upgraded big-time (location-wise). That's a really pretty area. I used to do consulting work at the Westvaco mill in Luke MD, and stayed in Keyser WV. If I had to stay over a weekend, I'd spend time driving around the area. Some of those roads could be "exciting" if they were slippery with ice.
 
  • #32
Moonbear said:
I take it you've been to WVU, or know people who have, that you are familiar with the Mountain Lair?
This question wasn't directed at me, but I'll answer it anyway. I am not familiar with either of these, but I spent a delightful long weekend camping along Skyline Highway a few years ago. I saw a few bears scampering hither and yon, but the best was a doe and her fawn that wandered right into our campsite. She must have gotten used to people. When she saw me, even though she was slightly startled, she just situated herself twixt me and the fawn and ambled off.
 
  • #33
jimmysnyder said:
Now why would anyone leave a state that is so convenient to NY, PA, and DE?
I'm still conveniently close to PA...the pretty end of the state. :biggrin: Close enough to the others to visit, far enough not to be overrun with their bad drivers.

turbo-1 said:
Just looked up WVU, and I must say you've upgraded big-time (location-wise). That's a really pretty area. I used to do consulting work at the Westvaco mill in Luke MD, and stayed in Keyser WV. If I had to stay over a weekend, I'd spend time driving around the area. Some of those roads could be "exciting" if they were slippery with ice.

Definitely. Though, the local area is now sprouting up with strip malls and chain restaurants, but you don't have to drive far to get back into pretty country again.
 
  • #34
Moonbear said:
I'm still conveniently close to PA...the pretty end of the state. :biggrin: Close enough to the others to visit, far enough not to be overrun with their bad drivers.

Definitely. Though, the local area is now sprouting up with strip malls and chain restaurants, but you don't have to drive far to get back into pretty country again.
You are very close to the "pretty end" of PA. Sometimes when I worked at Luke, I'd fly into Pittsburgh and drive down instead of flying into Baltimore. I had more flight options if I flew into Baltimore, but the drive out of Pittsburgh was LOTS prettier and there were fewer bad drivers to contend with.
 
  • #35
Moonbear said:
but you don't have to drive far to get back into pretty country again.
So you left the smells of NJ for the sights of nature. Just be careful, most people die of natural causes.
 
  • #36
jimmysnyder said:
So you left the smells of NJ for the sights of nature. Just be careful, most people die of natural causes.

:smile: I lived in NJ long enough that there's still a chance I'll die the usual way...of cancer. :rolleyes: Every time I talk to anyone back in NJ, they know another 3 or 4 more people diagnosed with cancer.
 
  • #37
Yesterday, I woke up to another 10 cm (4 inches) of fresh snow.

No new snow today, but the temperature was -19 C (-2 F) when I left for work.
 
  • #38
George Jones said:
Yesterday, I woke up to another 10 cm (4 inches) of fresh snow.

No new snow today, but the temperature was -19 C (-2 F) when I left for work.
I hope you remembered to button up your vest.

I don't know who said:
As I set down one evening in a timber town cafe
A six foot-seven waitress, to me these words did say
"I see you are a logger and not a common bum
For no one but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb

"My lover was a logger, there's none like him today
If you'd sprinkle whisky on it, he'd eat a bale of hay
He never shaved the whiskers from off his horny hide
But he'd pound 'em in with a hammer, then bite 'em off inside

"My lover came to see me one freezing winter day
He held me in a fond embrace that broke three vertebrae
He kissed me when we parted so hard it broke my jaw
And I could not speak to tell him he'd forgot his mackinaw

"I watched my logger lover going through the snow
A-sauntering gaily homeward at forty eight below
The weather tried to freeze him, it tried it's level best
At a hundred degrees below zero, he buttoned up his vest

"It froze clean down to China, it froze to the stars above
At one thousand degrees below zero it froze my logger love
They tried in vain to thaw him and if you'll believe me, sir
They made him into ax blades to chop the Douglas fir

"That's how I lost my lover and to this caffay I come
And here I wait till someone stirs his coffee with his thumb
And then I tell my story of my love they could not thaw
Who kissed me when we parted so hard he broke my jaw"
 
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