Snow Geology

I know you want to see pictures of Paris. That is what Google is for. Actually, I'll get to that, but first this.

It has snowed at least a few hours a day for the last four days. It's snow madness, turning a fifteen minute commute into a nearly two hour Odyssey. On the plus side, it gives us a sort of temporary geology to look at until nature decides it's time for us to feel our feet again.


It's sideways, but hopefully you can make it out. There are very clearly different layers of snow, which I'm sure you could use to unravel the story of when it snowed and for how long, like looking at sedimentary layers of stone to tell when things were fossilized. The top layer is powder snow, which was falling even as I took the picture. The layer below seems compressed, maybe melting and refreezing? I think the rough looking part is from when they plowed the streets and left all the jumbled up snow on the side of the road, making uneven snow hills which people have dug little walkways like this one through.


Here again you can see the compressed snow near the bottom.


And here's the top of that same mountain of snow, no doubt freshly piled by snow plows, waiting to be conquered by some adventurous elementary schooler.


I have no explanation for how this works. That's a house, if you couldn't figure it out. The big white hook shape hanging off the side is just snow as far as I can tell. I don't know how it can resist gravity so well. I didn't think snow held together that well, especially without somebody there to pack it together.


This one's upside down. My new phone refuses to take pictures as I want, always changing the orientation without asking me. It's one of those snow trenches I mentioned earlier, but one of the walls seems to have collapsed. What's interesting is that it didn't collapse into a big pile of broken up snow, but rather two big balls of compacted snow. I'm guessing somebody did that, but I have no idea why one would. Just another mystery for science!