The Mother of All Snow Curls

Want to see the “mother of all” snow curls? Do you know what a snow curl is? Maybe you know it by another name, but if you live anywhere where there is a lot of snow during Winter, you’re probably familiar with them.

Snow falls and lands on the roof. Maybe the weather warms up and the snow slides off the roof. But if it doesn’t warm up, and instead turns colder, the bottom layer of that snow will turn to ice.

 

 

 

Once it turns to ice, it really has to warm up in order for the snow to melt enough to slide off the roof. When it does warm up, you’ve got the perfect storm brewing.

A storm of snow curls, that is. Some of them hang around for weeks. Here are just a few of the ones at our Valley homestead.

 

 

 

 

A little baby snow curl begins to grow…

 

 

 

 

A snow curl in the making. A layer of snow starts to melt in the winter afternoon sun and the snow just starts to slide. Then, it cools down in late afternoon and this happens.

 

 

 

And this….

 

 

 

A good layer of snow on the roof of the woodroom.

 

 

 

That layer of snow melts enough to start to curl, but it’s not warm enough to have the snow actually slide off the roof.

 

 

 

An awesome snow curl hanging off the back of the woodroom.

 

 

 

Here’s the mother of all snow curls…it surpasses anything we have ever seen in the Valley. This is the snow on the porch side of the house (the side that looks over the garden and pastures. You can see the lines from the metal roof! Pretty cool, eh?