It’s Snow Big Deal

A foot of snow in mid-November is unusual but, in this region, it’s no big deal. Not really.

And it’s always fun to see what the snow and wind leave in their wake.

We often get amazing sastrugi but this time around we got twin peaks.

The table on our deck and the porch rails are a couple inches apart, far enough to give us two identical shark-fin-shaped piles of snow, about 18 inches tall.

And this spider’s lovely work was further adorned by the snow.

My sister says it says as much about my housekeeping as it does about the weather. I say the web is outside and that doesn’t count as “housekeeping.”

In fact, the snow makes the world look clean and sparkly as the sun shines today. The temperatures will warm soon and this will all melt. And, then, inevitably, the next storm will come and pile us up again.

But we have a cozy house, a fireplace, cats to cuddle, and warming beverages.

Winter is snow . . . big deal.

Building Your Word Power: Sastruga

Over the years, I’ve posted photos of one of my favorite winter phenomena and a couple of years ago, blogger Sandra, from A Corner of Cornwall, told me there was a fancy name for it!

Sastruga (pl. sastrugi) It means: “ridges of snow formed on a snowfield by the action of the wind.”

When the wind screams off the lake, it sculpts the snow into constantly changing shapes . . . sastrugi.

Some are subtle.

Some are gorgeous, sinuous, and flashy.

It may look like striations in rock

Or waves of water, breaking

Or just plain peculiar . . .

This was from earlier this week. Those “duck bills” have an overhang of at least a foot!

Sastruga–A new word for you–you’ll need to use it three times, in a sentence, to make it your own . . .

Would you ever have a need for such a word, in your neck of the woods?