Recently, local schools have had three snow days, which, in Fairbanks, is sufficiently rare to be worth comment. Contrary to popular belief, schools here don’t close because of cold weather, alone. If they did, the students would have sporadic days off from December to March. The school district usually only closes schools when transportation becomes too dangerous, which has been the case lately. In our climate, we are well-accustomed to dealing with snowy roads. The borough has a large snow removal crew who work at all hours all winter long. However, sometimes the snow falls so fast or the roads become so icy that the crew can’t match the pace.
My snowblower has seen more use this winter than the previous total use in the three years I have owned it. Unfortunately, the air intake for the carburetor is located inconveniently and is slowly constricted by ice forming around it as snow blows back against the machine during use. Usually, if I pause, the heat from the idling engine melts the ice away and I can resume my work. On Saturday, things did not work so well. The wind blew the snow all around me as I worked in the driveway and the snowblower was choked into stalling. I used a heat gun to melt the ice away, but my impatient attempts to start the machine with insufficient airflow fouled the spark plug. The driveway had been cleared well enough that I could drive to a store and purchase a replacement, but it was not an easy drive. I saw two cars off the road in the three-mile trip to the store. Replacing the plug solved the problem, but my reward was the potential to do more snowblowing. It was an ironic triumph.
The air intake for the biomeiler has never brought me much trouble, but the recent snowfall threatened to allow snow to be pulled into the ventilation pipe. If moisture were to accumulate in the pipe inside the biomeiler it would be quite difficult to clean out. I would have to hope to evaporate it away before it closed off the lowest bend.
I got my snow shovel and set to work. It was only a matter of twenty minutes of effort to dig away the snow from the air intake. I didn’t have to clear the snow all the way to the ground, but curiosity compelled me to see what the total depth would be. In the image, the tape measure is extended to a height of 36.”
The annual snowfall here is approximately 65”, but there is enough settling, sublimation, and melting throughout the winter that the actual depth is seldom so great as that.
The exhaust vent on the chicken coop is not causing any trouble, but it has an ice formation of a type I have never seen before. Typically, the frost grows straight out and any melting results in a single stalactite and stalagmite of ice. We seldom have much wind here, but the recent storms have caused the wind direction to change so often that the frost on the end of the exhaust vent did not grow straight out, but in branches.
Because the air temperature was fairly warm, the heat of the exhaust air was sufficient to cause some melting. The net result of these influences is the peculiar icicle collection seen in the image.
At the Fairbanks Lutheran Church, the snowfall has creatively adorned the three crosses with bow ties and berets. I took this picture while Melissa and I were visiting the library, across the street. I appreciate that nature uses the snow to make some humorous gestures to balance out all the exertions it brings.
The icicle coloration bespeaks water frozen from an unclean source. This happened when I had the house, and it turned out that the porch roof had begun to rot with water that backed up under the shingles. I hope you have better luck with their source of moisture being problematic.
Yes, it is an interesting collection of positions for the icicles!
The moisture is chicken exhalation mixed with dust from manure and bedding.
It could hardly be less clean.