I wonder if this qualifies as a silver lining to the situation of global climate extremes. When nature behaves so out of the ordinary, I pay closer attention exactly what is happening. Observing the world when it’s being unusual feels like carving off a bite-sized piece from the question “why isn’t everything homogeneous?”.
Why isn’t right-now the same as whatever was before the big bang or after the heat death? I can’t trace it all the way back; if there’s any “why” at all, I think our cognition is limited to processing it through an anthropomorphic lens. But I can trace a step or two with surprisingly good certainty, based on all the information and observations and habits of thought that I’ve picked up so far. I’m surprised by the certainty because usually I pay the most attention to the questions that seem least obvious to answer. I’m learning—fashionable term might be “updating”, but I couldn’t really tell you a distinction other than fashion between “updating” and what “learning” is supposed to mean—learning that sometimes following the “because” chain as far as I can yields little bitty new and interesting things. Cup-stacking practice.
It’s done some sort of freezing rainy thing all night, and there’s a layer of ice on almost everything. The snow looks like it’s hiding a lake where the water normally runs off in the rain. The gutters are dripping—icicles off their fore-edge, but rivulets of still-wet water behind them down the fascia.
Some but not all of the icicles tattle on the direction that the wind has blown. With the right weather conditions through a period of freezing, there’s no reason an icicle couldn’t be shaped to spell out an arbitrary word in cursive. There’s the breaking strength of the ice, but with the right ratio of drip speed to freeze rate, each drip of water accretes another reinforcing layer all the way along before lengthening the end of the long skinny cone. That’s just like tree rings make trees long skinny cones, only trees usually go up and icicles usually go down. I guess the tree ring count always tells you the age of a log, so by slicing every foot or so and counting rings, you could tell the entire growth history of the tree. How tall was the tree x years ago? It was the height of the first slice with only x rings showing in it.
The garage that came with my house is one of those cheap metal carports, where the corrugations go horizontally along the sides. This creates some fascinating ice behavior: In some spots, the water has conformed to the underside of the corrugation and made fake-icicles flat against the steel, and in other spots the icicles have struck out on their own from the outermost point of a corrugation, hanging with air all around. There are a couple spots inside where I’ve placed insulation between the frame legs of the structure, and outside that insulation I see more of the ice that drips flat along the steel, and fewer of the free-hanging icicles. Notable exception: that section of the exterior has a big column of ice almost exactly outside of where the cold steel leg of the structure stands inside. I think this means the freestanding icicles are more likely when the air on the opposite side of the steel is colder.
The layer of ice on a horizontal steel rod (top of a cattle panel) nearby has few icicles; the water has encased it all the way around. The fascinating thing with it is how the outermost layer is crackled and islanded, like crocodile-skin or a mostly-burned log glowing in the fire. Some of the little islands of ice protruding above the rest have the lacy patterns which storybooks show on single-paned old windows and call graffiti by Jack Frost. Well, they don’t call it graffiti, but that’s what we call it nowadays when a stranger uninvitedly draws pictures on your house. I think this means there was a layer of wet water over the ice which has slowly gotten frozen by the air.
Walking on the snow is different again today. The surface seems rougher; stepping straight down in house-slippers yields adequate traction. The strength of the crust is decreasing; in some spots, my heel sinks when all my weight is on a single foot while taking a step. Prints from the intervening days are showing up where they were nearly invisible before, because the layer of water saturating lower layers of snow paints contrast where the white-on-white was imperceptibly crushed before.
The ice makes amazing glassy noises when it creaks and breaks and falls. All the noises are things wiggling and moving; things sliding roughly past each other like microscopic sandpaper; things ripping and tearing apart from one another like that trick to ripping a phone book in half. That trick is to start one page at a time, but overlap them so it looks like you’re multi-tasking and super strong. I haven’t actually tried that trick, though—will have to do it next time I’m getting rid of a magazine. Uline sends out phonebook-sized ones; I’ll probably receive another within the next few months.
I wonder if ice is really stronger at colder temperatures, or if something else is making it seem that way. Does ice even get below freezing? I know water doesn’t really boil hotter than boiling; that’s why a double boiler works for making chocolate and yet another reason that the universal solvent is super weird. It must get colder; chest freezers have that setting adjustment dial. I suppose two chest freezers set to different temps, and a standard water mold, and a fixed amount of water, and a stack of weights, could probably test the ice strength question. Or I could look it up later.
I wonder if this qualifies as a silver lining to the situation of global climate extremes. When nature behaves so out of the ordinary, I pay closer attention exactly what is happening. Observing the world when it’s being unusual feels like carving off a bite-sized piece from the question “why isn’t everything homogeneous?”.
Why isn’t right-now the same as whatever was before the big bang or after the heat death? I can’t trace it all the way back; if there’s any “why” at all, I think our cognition is limited to processing it through an anthropomorphic lens. But I can trace a step or two with surprisingly good certainty, based on all the information and observations and habits of thought that I’ve picked up so far. I’m surprised by the certainty because usually I pay the most attention to the questions that seem least obvious to answer. I’m learning—fashionable term might be “updating”, but I couldn’t really tell you a distinction other than fashion between “updating” and what “learning” is supposed to mean—learning that sometimes following the “because” chain as far as I can yields little bitty new and interesting things. Cup-stacking practice.
It’s done some sort of freezing rainy thing all night, and there’s a layer of ice on almost everything. The snow looks like it’s hiding a lake where the water normally runs off in the rain. The gutters are dripping—icicles off their fore-edge, but rivulets of still-wet water behind them down the fascia.
Some but not all of the icicles tattle on the direction that the wind has blown. With the right weather conditions through a period of freezing, there’s no reason an icicle couldn’t be shaped to spell out an arbitrary word in cursive. There’s the breaking strength of the ice, but with the right ratio of drip speed to freeze rate, each drip of water accretes another reinforcing layer all the way along before lengthening the end of the long skinny cone. That’s just like tree rings make trees long skinny cones, only trees usually go up and icicles usually go down. I guess the tree ring count always tells you the age of a log, so by slicing every foot or so and counting rings, you could tell the entire growth history of the tree. How tall was the tree x years ago? It was the height of the first slice with only x rings showing in it.
The garage that came with my house is one of those cheap metal carports, where the corrugations go horizontally along the sides. This creates some fascinating ice behavior: In some spots, the water has conformed to the underside of the corrugation and made fake-icicles flat against the steel, and in other spots the icicles have struck out on their own from the outermost point of a corrugation, hanging with air all around. There are a couple spots inside where I’ve placed insulation between the frame legs of the structure, and outside that insulation I see more of the ice that drips flat along the steel, and fewer of the free-hanging icicles. Notable exception: that section of the exterior has a big column of ice almost exactly outside of where the cold steel leg of the structure stands inside. I think this means the freestanding icicles are more likely when the air on the opposite side of the steel is colder.
The layer of ice on a horizontal steel rod (top of a cattle panel) nearby has few icicles; the water has encased it all the way around. The fascinating thing with it is how the outermost layer is crackled and islanded, like crocodile-skin or a mostly-burned log glowing in the fire. Some of the little islands of ice protruding above the rest have the lacy patterns which storybooks show on single-paned old windows and call graffiti by Jack Frost. Well, they don’t call it graffiti, but that’s what we call it nowadays when a stranger uninvitedly draws pictures on your house. I think this means there was a layer of wet water over the ice which has slowly gotten frozen by the air.
Walking on the snow is different again today. The surface seems rougher; stepping straight down in house-slippers yields adequate traction. The strength of the crust is decreasing; in some spots, my heel sinks when all my weight is on a single foot while taking a step. Prints from the intervening days are showing up where they were nearly invisible before, because the layer of water saturating lower layers of snow paints contrast where the white-on-white was imperceptibly crushed before.
The ice makes amazing glassy noises when it creaks and breaks and falls. All the noises are things wiggling and moving; things sliding roughly past each other like microscopic sandpaper; things ripping and tearing apart from one another like that trick to ripping a phone book in half. That trick is to start one page at a time, but overlap them so it looks like you’re multi-tasking and super strong. I haven’t actually tried that trick, though—will have to do it next time I’m getting rid of a magazine. Uline sends out phonebook-sized ones; I’ll probably receive another within the next few months.
I wonder if ice is really stronger at colder temperatures, or if something else is making it seem that way. Does ice even get below freezing? I know water doesn’t really boil hotter than boiling; that’s why a double boiler works for making chocolate and yet another reason that the universal solvent is super weird. It must get colder; chest freezers have that setting adjustment dial. I suppose two chest freezers set to different temps, and a standard water mold, and a fixed amount of water, and a stack of weights, could probably test the ice strength question. Or I could look it up later.