Did You Know -- A few things to know about Snow

                                     Snowflakes come in an abundant array of shapes and sizes

         This winter season it seems we had "more" snow in March and April than actual winter! (Climate change, perhaps?) And our next to last snow, right around the beginning of spring, was 13 full inches! But the next day it was sunny and warmer, most of it melting away in one day. So why wasn't the area flooded?

     It's interesting (perhaps Mother Nature's way of being merciful) that 10 inches of snow equals only one inch of water when it melts. When all that snow melted it didn't cause a horrendous flood. I guess the snowflakes themselves, since they are all shaped differently, had a lot of spaces in between, piling up in a lopsided fashion.

     According to a Mental Floss article, a snow with the largest snowflakes was reported in 1887 at Fort Keogh, Montana. The people there saw the snow coming down and thought the flakes were bigger than "milk pans," which I'm guessing were pretty wide. Deep, compressed snow can appear to have a color -- why else would those icebergs in Alaska look blue?

     They say igloos can actually be quite warm. The compacted snow traps air and keeps colder air out, so it's a great insulator. Even so, I don't see myself any time soon residing in a snow house, though somewhere up in Scandinavia there is a hotel that is all ice, I believe. I heard the temperature was NOT warm!