Sunday, January 24, 2010

The end of January and it's 44 degrees.

And it was just a week ago we had ice.
It can look like an ice dam, but that is purely looks. If I keep the gutters clean, it forms icicles and just drips off the western side of the house.
The eastern side rarely gets this many or this dramatic ice. I would imagine that has something to do with sun exposure.

This brings up something I've been pondering this winter but I haven't been able to find an answer to. Notice the icicles. In addition to being rather dramatic when the sun hits them a certain way, they are evenly spaced. No, really, they are. It doesn't always look that way, given the vagaries of melting, but they are all spaced roughly an inch apart. I noticed this back in December when we had the season's first rain/sleet/snow mix. Here are a couple of photos, one of the deck rail and the other of the top of the recycling bin.

Notice the evenly spaced icicles.
I've done some off and on searching to find out why. If you compare these two photos to the above photos of the back of the house, the icicles are about an inch apart, it's just that the amount of frozen water at the top will meld them together.

Could someone explain this? Yes, it makes me a nerd or a geek or a neek or a gerd or something, but I'm curious.

I leave you with one final example.
Beverage: Orange juice

Deb

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