| The following column appeared in The River Reporter on December 18, 1998. |
By Bert S. Feldman
The Recusant Reporter
Thursday, December 18, 1998
Do you have a bumper sticker on your car that says "Think Snow!" Cheer up — one-fifth of the surface of the earth is covered with snow all through the year. This vast portion of the land surface of our planet includes mountaintops over a certain height, and the polar regions. Add to this imposing figure the white stuff that falls sporadically on six continents sometime or other, and you have a heap of shoveling ahead of you.
Most precipitation spends part of its life cycle as snow. Since approximately 124,000 cubic miles of precipitation sprinkles this planet annually, it's small wonder that there is so much snow.
Postmen, highway crews, construction teams and the elderly hate snow with a passion. Ski resort owners and kids simply love it. Snow serves us in more ways than we realize. It is an insulating blanket that keeps the earth warm through the days and nights of bitter cold. It stores up water for our use, releasing it in the spring into wells, streams and reservoirs. It offers recreational fun and ensures us, come spring and summer, swift rivers for canoeing and velvety putting greens. It gives us electrical power. Snow gives us beautiful scenic outlooks and covers up the messes we have created throughout the rest of the year.
Snow is a crystalline form of water, that always has six points. A somewhat eccentric fellow from Vermont, W. A. Bentley (1881-1935), usually called "Snowflake" by his friends, devoted his entire adult life to photographing snowflakes. Bentley has informed us that he never saw two snowflakes exactly alike. When we stop to think that a cubic foot of snow may hold as many as ten million snowflakes, and enough snow has fallen throughout time to cover this planet with fifty miles of snow, it makes us wonder if Bentley could possibly be correct.
Here are a few more figures to dazzle your mind: moisture in the atmosphere can be in any one of three forms — gas (clouds), fluid, or solid (ice). Each water droplet or ice crystal forms around a microscopic particle of solid matter, such as industrial dust, volcanic ash or salt brought from evaporation of seawater. Lately, we have been plagued by droplets forming around acids generated by industrial waste or automotive exhaust to make what is called "acid rain."
The microscopic particles that form the nucleus of a droplet or an ice crystal are indeed small! It takes from five to ten million droplets to make a single raindrop, or a million crystals to form a single snowflake.
Meteorologists recognize ten different shapes of snowflakes. Eskimos are said to have over a hundred words that pertain to snow - snow suitable for building igloos, snow that will permit their sleds to glide smoothly over the surface, snow that will melt quickly for use as drinking or cooking water, and so on.
Think of it the next time you are out there shoveling the stuff out of your driveway. An average ten inches of snowfall will create a load that runs about 100 tons to the acre. If the storm lasts ten hours, that same acre will contain approximately a million billion snowflakes. To break it down to more imaginable dimensions; a 50-foot-long sidewalk, five feet wide, with a snowfall of 15" will entail shoveling a ton of snow, depending on water content. No wonder you say "Oh! My aching back!"
So while you are shoveling, skiing, admiring the white landscape or getting your car out of a snowdrift, remember that however clever or ingenious people think they are, nature can make our most tremendous efforts seem like child's play, and throw in some beauty as well.
To all my readers, may your holidays be filled with beauty and love. May your New Year be one of happiness. May the world know only Peace and may all your dreams be fulfilled.
