The Cellar - June 22, 2009: Snow Rollers

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- - June 22, 2009: Snow Rollers (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=20521)

June 22, 2009: Snow Rollers

They look a little like snow covered hay rolls, but they are not.

Quote:

On the evening of March 31st, 2009, Tim Tevebaugh was driving home from work east of Craigmont in the southern Idaho Panhandle. Across the rolling hay fields, Tim saw a very unusual phenomenon. The snow rollers that he took pictures of are extremely rare because of the unique combination of snow, wind, temperature and moisture needed to create them. They form with light but sticky snow and strong (but not too strong) winds. These snow rollers formed during the day as they weren’t present in the morning on Tim’s drive to work.

http://cellar.org/2009/SnowRollers.jpg

Quote:

The following conditions are needed for snow rollers to form:

The ground must be covered by a layer of ice to which snow will not stick.
The layer of ice must be covered by wet, loose snow with a temperature near the melting point of ice.
The wind must be strong enough to move the snow rollers, but not strong enough to blow them too fast.
Alternatively, gravity can move the snow rollers as when a snowball, such as those that will fall from a tree or cliff, lands on steep hill and begins to roll down the hill.
Because of this last condition, snow rollers are more common in hilly areas. However, the precise nature of the conditions required makes them a very rare phenomenon.

link

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Basically, cylindrical snowballs, right?

Wow. I love it when freaky stuff happens.

Those pictures are from a mile away and they're sixty five feet high. If you look closely you can see cows and sheep embedded in them.

Most of them are 18 inches to two feet in diameter.

Those are small cows and sheep that I see embedded in them.

Makes me want to be there instead of in this 100+ degree hell we're in down here. Looks refreshing.

Mother Nature is so amazing - Thanks Bruce, another great find.

Very cool. Reminds me of that rolled up hay or straw or whatever it is...when I worked at the produce farm in the market some guy asked me how much one of those rolls weighed. I'm like "how the hell should I know?" No, not really, I only thought that.

A 5 ft hay roll should weigh about 1,000 lbs. ;)

Dang. Wish the Cellar had existed in 1981, or at the very least that I knew Bruce. ;)

That's funny, though, I might have told the guy, these days "I don't know, I'll google it later."

How come so many weird things happen in Idaho?

Hemingway, separatists, my own private...now this.

Makes you think.

Apologies to Bri and Hemingway, but snow rollers happen in lots of places.

Here in KY, we don't roll our snow. We roll our dope, though, we've been known to do that on occasion. Our snow, now, we line that up in big fat slobberknockers on a large mirr---oh, wait, wait, nevermind.:headshake

I wish we could get enough snow to roll down here. It's once in a blue moon.