First snow of the season

Last night Judy got an extra birthday gift -- the first snow of the season.  It's not a really heavy snow, but it came down slowly without a lot of wind so it sits lightly on every branch in the woods.  It's also a nice gift for our son Rob, who has always visited early in the year when we had lots of snow and he was able to go sledding.  Maybe we'll get in a run or two before he goes home!While the westher is beautiful, and while we really enjoyed seeing our daughter Deanne over the holiday weekend, we're glad she went home early yesterday and we're looking forward to seeing her again soon for Christmas.

First hard freeze

We had our first hard freeze last night -- not just a frost, but a real freeze. Not a big deal here, but I can just hear some California teeth knocking at the thought! It's supposed to be pretty nice by Hallowe'en, and I imagine that I'll have the usual bunch of terrible visitors. Lots of kids in the neighborhood, which is a lot of fun.

Gustav missed us -- almost

Hurricanes do most of their damage on the coast before they go over land and start to weaken. But they linger on for several days as strong storms, and they can be nasty, even several hundred miles from the coast. Yesterday we were in just the edge of the remains of Gustav; just south and east of us they got several inches of rain, and we had a blustery day but we got less than an inch. Today is dawning mostly clear and we're looking forward to a nice day -- there are signs that fall is near, but we're in no hurry...

Please close the windows

We're deep into August, but the request "Please close the windows" doesn't mean what it usually does at this time of year. We've been having really nice weather with the low temperatures down in the lower 60s or even mid-50s, and Judy's been asking me to close the windows because it's uncomfortably cool for her. The long stretch of wet weather is also continuing, and I've not yet had to water any of our plants. (This has actually been going on over a year; I didn't need to water last summer either.) An unusual, but not unpleasant, stretch of weather -- though there are probably many places in the world where the weather is as bad as ours is good. Global warming brings all kinds of climate change.

How time flies...

It's been almost a month since my last posting -- a very busy month, but that's probably not a good excuse. In that month we've come home from China and gotten back on North American time, been to some NSF panels in Washington, Steve's been to an advisory board meeting in Edmonton, and we've been out to visit family in Sacramento. This is the first weekend we've been home in about six weeks. It's about time!

A few things to share from the month, though. First, you may have an image of a suburban home in China, but unless you've visited there you probably don't think of this:These are very interesting homes with plenty of room, but they don't look much like a North American or European home.

Second, we've talked about our extended Chinese "family" of friends who Judy knew through her lab at Iowa. While we were at the NSF panels we went to visit our friends Jie and Yu and their brand-new baby Alex. Such wonderful people!


Edmonton was a very quick trip with no sightseeing time, but I did take one photo to share. Remember that I'm a mathematician at heart, so I was glad to see an example of a hypoteneuse (with a nod to Tim for the bad pun):

This morning was one of those rare August mornings when the temperature and humidity both fell, and after we went out to the Saturday farmer's market (see the earlier posting on that) I went for a long walk. The woods undergrowth is high and had some interesting flowering plants, and there were some butterflies out along with lots of birds and a few baby rabbits. A really nice day. I hope your day was lovely too!

Melting snow

Until I came to Iowa, my model for melting snow was the Sierra and Cascade mountains. In the mountains, and when it is undisturbed, snow melts gently and smoothly, keeping a nice surface until it's finally gone. But when snow is disturbed (for example, is shoveled or plowed) it has an uneven surface that can catch the rays of the sun to create melt pockets where melting is accelerated by focusing the sun's rays. Sometimes these pockets will actually melt so much that they leave a light lace-like tracing over them. This can create some very beautiful effects. Look at the images below (he said, going into Professor mode):
The left-hand part of the image shows a photograph of one of these snow pockets. If you look at the right-hand part of the image through a pair of red-green, red-blue, or red-cyan glasses, you can see the same snow pocket in stereo. Click on the image to see a full-sized image; the stereo is much better that way. (This uses a tool to create anaglyphs from stereo pairs that Mike Bailey and I talk about in our textbook on computer graphics shaders. If you want more details, drop me a note...)

Fresh snow

We had another snowfall yesterday and got perhaps 6" of fresh snow. This brings the snowfall total so far this winter to over four and a half feet. That may not sound like a lot if you live in Rochester (Hi, Nan and Walt) but it's a lot for Iowa; this is perhaps the fifth largest amount of snow on record here. And there's a lot of winter left...


Some freezing rain preceded the snow, and some very strong winds followed it, so travel was discouraged all day and almost all public activities were canceled. The picture shows the snow falling in the front yard, where it turned our deer screen into a big piece of lace, and in the back yard, where it made the woods quite magical. We were snug as a bug here and had a fire in the fireplace all day. We're again reminded of how very fortunate we are.

Snow

Those who live in the high Arctic have, it is said, many words for snow. For a good description of that -- much better than I could give -- read "Smilla's Sense of Snow" by Peter Hoeg, an excellent book that is a thriller, a character study of a young woman from Greenland living in Denmark, and a sociological study of Greenlanders and Danes.

Here in Iowa we have fewer words for snow, but we do have a number of different kinds of it. At the moment the snow that is falling is almost a frozen mist, with tiny, drifting crystals. (I cleaned off our sidewalk this afternoon with a broom instead of a snow shovel.) Earlier today we had big, fat dry flakes; when it's warmer we get big, fat wet flakes. We get light, grainy, dry snow that drifts easily in the wind. We get snow that you can make snowballs and snow forts out of; we get snow that will not form into snowballs unless you make them bare-handed and your hands' heat melts them enough to stick together. But snow is not really a negative; you can drive on snowy streets and walk on snowy sidewalks and sled down snowy hills. No, it's when you have ice below the snow that things get tough, or when you get sleet or raindrops with sleet in them, or getting freezing rain and the dreaded "wintry mix". We have very little of that for now and are just enjoying being warm and dry.

Brrrrrrr.......

We've had snow on the ground for six weeks, but it really hadn't been very cold -- until today. It was -7F this morning when we took Rob to the airport, and the forecast said it wouldn't break zero all day...one of those clear, sunny, frigid Iowa days. We'll probably have colder weather before the winter is over, but this was the first time I really, really felt cold.

The photo shows the ice on the inside of our windows and makes me glad we have some waffle-pattern shades that give us some window insulation. But we don't have to be out again today, so we're a lot more fortunate than those who have outdoor work!

Let it snow...

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...


After our January thaw, it wasn't clear that we'd have snow for Rob to enjoy while he's here. Yesterday's photo shows that we certainly didn't have any then. But it snowed last night, not the big winter storm that was forecast but a couple of inches of nice, light powder -- and it got a lot colder. Rob and I went out walking this afternoon on the path behind the house (the one shown in the January thaw photos) and were out perhaps a half hour, walking about a mile but looking at tracks in the snow (rabbit, deer, people, dogs), the way the snow was blowing, and everything. It felt pretty cold, especially for a current Californian. If you look closely, you can see Rob's glasses behind the Cunningham tartan scarf...