wanneroo wrote:NTSOG wrote:wanneroo: "It's been a very cold winter with ice storms ..."
Ice storms sure make the trees look pretty, until the weight of ice breaks the trees [and sometimes the power lines too] and driving becomes a lottery as cars slide along at speed with no one actually being able to steer them on the black ice on the roads. I had a couple of road-skating slides in Indiana and Wisconsin years ago. Luckily we hit nothing solid.
Jim
I have Quattro and snow tires so I get around pretty good in winter.
I have not been able to snowshoe this year due to ice and wind. The snow pack was a mix of many layers of snow, ice, sleet, rain with many hard freezes plus with all the wind this year and dead ash trees, just didn't seem safe to venture into the woods. Hopefully before the season ends we will have a big snowstorm with a dump of fluffy snow and I can go out one time.
I've only seen snow from a distance of several kilometers, and don't have any compelling urge to investigate it more closely
But it does intrigue me a bit.
My understanding is that snow doesn't simply "blanket" the terrain, making everything six-inches higher, it fills the hollows and blows off the exposed areas so the snow can be one-inch deep here and ten-feet deep one step further on - is that right? And in one spot it can be very solid and take your weight but a step away it can be fluffy and you fall through it? If you know the terrain it's probably not an issue, and if there is vegetation and trees they can give you a gauge of depth, but is there anything visual that indicates the depth, like the texture, colour, reflection or anything or are you just gambling with every step you take?