Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Weather Blowing Through

At least, I hope so!
truck The weather this month, so far, has been a bit variable (as weather often is), but it has been overall steadily deteriorating into wintry conditions. First, about a week ago, a little bit of ice appeared one morning - on my windshield and on the roof shingles of our little house - which I saw when I was about to head for work (photo above). No scraping was required.
cloudsA couple days later, there was still no snow on the ground except at the highest elevations. In the photo above, you can see what the early morning clouds looked like just after I arrived at work. Field work would have still be possible, but most everyone I know was indoors working on reports, maps, cross-sections, and last-minute year-end things, including the logging of any drill holes that were still in progress. I understand, however, from my forays into the current state of the industry at this year's Northwest Mining convention, that many drill rigs have been sent home early this year, and that it won't be difficult to come by drill rigs next year, in case you have some money saved up for ongoing or upcoming projects.
cloudy mountain Just a few days ago, on Saturday, clouds and cold temperatures moved in, permanently it seems, bringing snow. It was cold when I arrived at work, and snow was falling on higher slopes in the distance (above), but lower slopes were still clear.
snowy mountainThat all changed mid-day Saturday. By late afternoon, it looked like the snow was here to stay. In the photo above, the yellow and pink of the late afternoon sunset lights up clouds and snowy mountains, the same mountains seen in the previous photo. I drove home on snow-covered and icy to wet roads under partly cloudy skies.
morning windshieldTwo days later, the snow was everywhere. It has been everywhere ever since. I went to work in the snow, arrived in the snow, and left in the snow. The photos above and below show morning SNOW! The snow was cold, light, and blew sideways, forming drifts behind my truck and lots of other places.
morning snow
new graupel Today, it's been a bit of a different story, still cold, but sunny to partly cloudy most of the day. As you can see above, however, we did get a little new graupel on older snow.
window viewI've spent the day mostly on the inside looking out, with MOH off to try out some winter camping and hiking. I hope it's not too cold! (I think snow and cold are part of the point, however.)

3 comments:

Garry Hayes said...

Looks like our Central Valley will have our first freezing night tonight. Snow fell in the foothills to 1,000 feet or so.

Silver Fox said...

First freezing night! Wow!

It's a negative 2 degrees F outside right now. The sun just came up, so it should start warming sometime soon, but might still drop a bit before that happens.

Brrr!

A 1000-foot snow line is pretty low; I think we've missed that, so far, unless it's still on the way. I'll have to check the satellite picture.

Silver Fox said...

Brrr... It's up to a positive 5 degrees F out there now; and I'm sure the sun must feel very warm, so I'd best get outside and do my errands.