The Village Snow Witch Has Spoken!

 

She prefers to be called "Prognosticator", but it does smack of something else. I have also heard she is training a new village prognosticator, who concurred with her "prognostication". 

All is good...

Clear and Cold

Big snow flake, picture taken by the "father of snow", The snowflakes photos here were taken by Kenneth Libbrecht of CalTech, using a specially-designed snowflake photomicroscope. They show real snow crystals that fell to earth in northern Ontario, Alaska, Vermont, the Michigan Upper Peninsula, and the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.

Little snowflake.

This time of year "clear and cold" is a frequent weather report. This was explained by this rhyme from my childhood.

"As the days grow longer the cold grows stronger."

I will also report at this time that our first "cat-tracking snow" was very late this year. Our local Snow Witch or snow prognosticator, as she prefers to be called, forecasts 35 snowfalls this winter.

This last week we were suppose to have flurries through the day with accumulations of between 1" and possibly 3" near the "lake". The lake being Lake Michigan. I'm really not "near the lake" in the sense the weatherman is predicting. I stepped out of the house, seeing the very tiny flakes and thought:

"Big snow little snow; little snow big snow."

I'm sure this sounds like gobblety-gook to most of you. To others interested in the old ways of weather forecasting, read carefully. When the size of the snow flakes are large, conditions (cold, humidity, etc. in the upper atmosphere are right for a small amount of snowfall. When the snowflakes are small, heavy snows.

Since back moving to Wisconsin where my family has lived for over 150 years, I have been attempting to get to the meat of this saying. As such, I have noticed when the snowflake size changes from the small to large flakes the snow storm is finishing up. Last week when I walked out of the house and saw the tiny flakes, I thought, "Whoa! This is a lot more than an inch or so."

It ended up being somewhere between 7" and 10". I shoveled, and shoveled, and shoveled.

So what's the cut-off between a little and a big snowfall? I've been analyzing this,too. I would say somewhere between 3" and 4" is that line, at least this has been my observation.

In this digital age we are moving farther and farther away from the wisdom of observation and more into the realm of science. The weather persons were all over themselves apologizing for the vast difference in call this last storm.

They could have asked me...

I came across Libbrecht's research working on a picture book on snow for the Twins. With an entire generation separating their father (my brother) and me, I feel the need to pass along these "wisdoms."

Now, if I could just get the village Snow Witch into sharing her knowledge which allows her to predict our annual number of snowfalls with such accuracy! For other weather stories, search my blog using the search tool and enter "snow witch".

Have a Happy New Year! (And, if it is sunny and the moon is close to full, expect fairly cold weather.)

What the Snow Witch Says

Handsome son, his girlfriend and Faithful Companion this last Sunday at the village Mill Pond.

I visited the local library. The village snow prognosticator says despite the beautiful weather we can still expect two more snow falls. The head librarian also says she is more than willing to give them up.

"Little Snow, Big Snow"

This picture of snow is not taken by me. It was taken by a snow researcher with an electron microscope. It is not what we think of as a snow flake. There are snowflakes, typically the larger ones that fall during warmer temperatures, that actually look like what we think of when we think of snow flakes. I'm pretty sure, though that this is what snow looks like when we are getting the "little snow, big snow" sort of snow.


Right now, I am watching the teeny, tiniest snowflakes fall out my dining room window. My ancestors were big journal keepers. Being English, one thing they liked to talk about in their journals was the weather. So a lot of the family stores tend to center around the weather and can be reinforced with these journals. Take the entry made over 150 years by my dad's grandfather, "March 23, ...snow is three feet deep on the flat. It is snowing again today..."

My great grandfather, AO, was worrying about planting early potatoes, many times planted here on Good Friday. I am assuming the March 23rd date to be coming up on that day for him. Here in present day central Wisconsin, it hit 55 degrees Fahrenheit here yesterday, on January 11. I have to wonder what AO would have thought about that!

AO's wife, Sarah, carried a rifle with her everywhere she went. Rumor has it she even took it to the outhouse with her, reportedly to shoot at crows, reading material like a Sear and Roebuck catalogue no doubt being put to a different task. Fact is though, they settled in central Wisconsin just a couple years or so after the land treaty with Chief Oshkosh was signed clearing the last of the Menominee Indians from this area. Most likely they still saw some migrating Indians passing through to summer hunting grounds, as this is an area with lots of these trails, one being what is now State Highway 22 which runs very near their homestead.

For all that, the house in which I now live has a "hidey hole" in the floor under the dining room carpet, where a whole family could hide from these "savages".

My forebears no doubt had opportunities to bore the natives with talk about the weather. However, the natives being connected to the climate more than we are today, could hold up their own in the limited way conversation can happen between non-fluent speakers. In my mind's eye, I can see the Indian standing in the dooryard with a blanket draped across his shoulders grunting out "little snow, big snow; big snow little snow," as the first tiny snowflakes hit his brow.

Everyone would nod and smile, and then maybe AO would respond with something like, "It sure is cold today." And again everyone would nod and smile. Accordingly, no one got shot or there would be family stories about that as well. What does come down is that the Indians said this, "little snow, big snow; big snow little snow."

What we are only now coming to understand is snowfall accumulation tends to be larger when the temperature and humidity are right for it; and those condition favor snowflakes of a smaller size. The natives, keen observers which they were, were passing along important meteorological information in those simple halting words and AO's response that it sure was cold seemed to indicate understanding on his part.

I'm not sure he wasn't just polite and talking about the weather. Since moving back to central Wisconsin, I have been keeping track. When we get "little snow", we get more than four inches. Big flakes? Less.

Right now those flakes are so fine and tiny, I'm thinking six inches. With only 6.3" this winter from an average of around 21" at this point, I have to say, "Let it snow!"

The Village Snow Prognosticator

This is the Ice Queen from the "Narnia" movie. Our snow witch could be her mother, but she looks a lot like her, and is the epitome of what I think of as a Snow Witch.

Here in Wild Rose we have our very own village snowfall prognosticator, AKA... THE SNOW WITCH.

"Da, dat daaah...!" (like the three chords from "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?")

I'm told she prefers the title Snow Prognosticator. For me, though, there is just something more melodramatic about "Snow Witch" (da, dat, daaah).

So anyway, there's this woman who was taught by someone else how to tell the number of snowfall an area will receive based on interpretations of the first 'cat-tracking" snowfall. If your black cat can't leave visible track in the snow as it crosses your path, the snowfall doesn't count. (You can see where the whole cat thing leads me down the path to the name "THE SNOW WITCH"...da, dat, daaaah!)

Last year, she predicted over 45 snowfalls, I forget exactly how many. She nailed the exact number on the head. Down at the local library they post and track her predictions and report on where we are with unrelenting vigilance.

Everyone wants to know. I don't think she has been more than one snowfall off in ten years. It's uncanny.

They didn't used to post it, but in this busy age, it saves our librarians time just to post it on a big white board brought out specifically for that purpose.

This year, she is predicting 23 total snowfall, three of which have already passed.

So 20 more and counting...

Our "Snow Prognosticator" is unfailing...