A bird alert: a Rufous Sided Towhee has just hopped into the bird scene going on outside the tirehouse; hadn't seen one of those in awhile!! My sister mentioned she was seeing them down her way, guess it's Towhee time! With all this snow, it is "feed the birds" time; the little feathered monsters are hanging on with everything in their world buried. Toss out the seeds and keep your cats inside.
Back to weather and snow - hard to say how much is around, only measures about a foot around here but the wild wind during the storm piled drifts much higher and also tumbled and broke the snow crystals, packing the snow more densely than the first day's gentle fluffiness. The sleet that fell here on Friday night also added a nice little ice layer to make the shoveling a multi-scoop operation: sweep away the fluffy top layer, pop the middle tumbled, broken, dense layer and finally slide under the sleet capped bottom powder zone to get near the ground; rest and repeat.
There is long term melting help coming, forecasts today call for temps in the low 40's and maybe a little warmer tomorrow with a chance of showers (likely rain but possibly ending as snow…), then cold again late week with serious warming by the weekend. The problem with temp forecasts with snow on the ground is that there is snow on the ground... and it never gets quite as warm as predicted. The atmosphere is mostly heated by the transfer of the sun's radiant energy absorbed by the ground, conducted into the lower atmosphere and then convects onward and upward. When the ground is covered with snow most of that radiation bounces back into space and doesn't heat up the air; it just never gets as warm as they think. We'll see!
If you do get out on Earth today, bundle up and be careful, it's slippery. But, it is time to get out the cross country skis or snow shoes or what ever trudging foot ware you own and go for it. It's a snow day, go play, Today on Earth!!
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