Update from the Lake: Hardly Any Snow

It's true that there hasn't been hardly any snow around the west since sometime before Xmas; nevertheless, when I was at the lake most recently, I went walking around looking for signs of winter. I found a few.

I found frozen drops hanging on pine needles.

Ice crystals above a background of thin snow in the shadows.

More frozen drops.

More!

And more!

I became enamored of trying to get photos of the colored sparkles -- tiny prisms of light -- being given off by the frozen drops...

...and found I could really only do it with colored sparkles that were out of focus.

I could also see little glints and colored sparkles in the snow, but these were less spectacular and harder to photograph. Here's an explanation of the occurrence of these rainbow colors when seen in snow (with a guide on how to photograph them!).

Snow and Light in the Morning

The inside of my truck on the morning of March 25th: I'm all packed and ready to go, but I haven't yet shoveled the snow off the truck and scraped the windshield. The clock reads 6:45 am: Ack, I'm late!
Light from my headlights illuminate the untracked snow of the driveway and street in front of me. (Yay for 4WD!)
I attempt to get a photo showing the snow falling in one of those starburst patterns, like this one that someone linked to recently (was that you, Dana?).
Illuminated snow ruts on the main road, which hasn't yet, at 6:53 am, been plowed.
A street light glows through the falling snow and my spotted windshield.
The old schoolhouse at Lane City almost blends into the snow-covered sagebrush.
I never saw a single snow plow once that morning!

Light and Color on a Cozy Indoor Day

It's cloudy and threatening snow outside, and I'm staying indoors, pretending we have a warm stove radiating heat, drinking coffee mixed with cocoa. This one corner of our little house usually looks fairly uncluttered, and sometimes the plants even get a bit of light. Not today. The upper shelves are stacked with various books, mostly geology or travel related, though not entirely. Titles I can read from here include A Garden of Bristlecones, Blue Highways, Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land, Topo! for Nevada, and Nevada Off the Beaten Path. I recommend all these books, though I can't comment about the Topo! program, as I haven't used it.

I'd say that it's probably cabin fever that's keeping me indoors, but that's not right: surely cabin fever would send me outside despite the dreary weather. It must be something else.
Over near the front door, a door used only to retrieve mail, the plants look bright and cheery, even as if the sun were shining through the clouds, but their color has as much to do with the camera setting as anything else.
Um, maybe it's time for more coffee.

From the Field: Reflection and Refraction

Just a quick photo grab of something seen in the field the other day. Reminds me of Snell's Law - and for all those who doubt it [looking at you, long-ago engineer in Philosophy of Science class], anisotropic media are far more common in the mineral world (and nature in general?) than isotropic media.