Things we can’t control. Start the list because, in reality, it is most anything. Everything. We can do our best to line things up the way we want them. Make sure all our ducks are in a row. Never putting all our eggs in one basket. And on. But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty or the mumbo-jumbo, a meteor could come hurtling through space and knock the whole scheme out of whack.
One thing, always, that reminds us of this fact, is the weather. We have no control over what comes from the skies. A big storm started in California, and now it is marching its way eastward, dumping precipitation all along the way.
That storm’s mother must not have asked if anyone had to use the restroom before the big trip. Nope. That thing is moving right along, peeing on everyone. Or snowing, depending on the temperature.
It is supposed to arrive in Ohio sometime Saturday night and hang around until Monday. Weekend guest. Depending on the spot, we’re expected to get around six inches, which is more than we’ve had in quite some time.
A mere pittance for the heavy hitters in our nation and around the world. Of the major cities in the United States, Syracuse, NY gets the most snow per year with 124 inches. In fact, one year, they tried to make it illegal to snow there. The city’s Common Council passed a decree that any more snow before Christmas Eve was illegal. As we all know, Mother Nature is a real comedienne sometimes. She gave them more snow just two days later.
There are all sorts of things that people get wrong about snow, like the myth that no two snowflakes are alike. Scientists, who probably spent WAY too much time looking, found two snowflakes exactly alike in 1988. They came during a snowstorm in Wisconsin.
And snow isn’t really white. It is translucent. Back to science. Snow is actually colorless. As mentioned, it is translucent, which means that light does not pass through it easily. In which case, that light is mostly reflected. And that is what we see. That reflected light from the surface.
It turns out white. We see colors because some wavelengths of light are absorbed while others are reflected. Light, that spectrum of colors ROYGBIV. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.
Any object takes on whatever color light is reflected. Like, a ball may be red because the red wavelengths are reflected while the other colors are absorbed.
And, since snow is made up of so many tiny surfaces, the light that hits it is scattered in a whole bunch of different directions. That light will actually bounce around from one surface to the next as it’s reflected. Like a pinball, no rhyme, no reason. As such, all the spectrum’s light waves are reflecting, and we get back the color white.
No matter how it reflects the light, we get a lot of snow in the United States. The snow scientists say we get one septillion ice crystals from our skies. That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—24 zeros.
I don’t know who counts, but there it is.
Sometimes, certain snow storms bump up the average. In 1921, over six feet of snow fell between April 14 at 2:30 p.m. and April 15 at 2:30 p.m. in Silver Lake, Colorado. That is the record, 75.8 inches in 24 hours.
On the other hand, some places are snow-free. Key West has never reported snow. The lowest temperature on record there is 41 degrees F. I think that was the week I visited Key West. Coldest boat trip I ever took.
No matter where you are, the weather is going to come, in one form or another, out of our control. I always pray that it will be gentle, for all of us.
Because it is out of our control.
==========
“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”
― Pema Chödrön
===========
“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”
― Carl Reiner
===========
“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house. All that cold, cold, wet day.”
― Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat
==========
It will snow. Like it or not.
