Tuesday, May 13, 2008

While I'm at it....

I have REALLY missed not being able to post regularly while in school this semester. It feels sooo good to be back.

One thing that got me through was making a list of the things I knew I'd have time to blog about once school was over. That list is long, but it's slowly getting shorter...

Next up: a phenomenon right in my own back yard!
I so wish that I would have been able to get pictures taken in stages, but, you'll just have to believe me. The snow in our back yard melts from the tree outward!

If one of you science nerds people could please explain this to me, I would much appreciate it. Because, this is counter-intuitive to the little brain in my big head.

I would think that the snow would melt around the edges of our yard first because that is the snow that isn't in the shade of our big oak tree. But, apparently the shade doesn't matter because we have one HOTT tree! :)

Has anyone ever seen anything like this? I sure know I haven't.

Which brings me to my next question: can I count this as one of my firsts? If I am able to figure out how to do those handy-dandy blog poll type things, I'll totally do one for this. But, if I can't, please just let me know what you think in the comments!
And before you answer, you should know that I can almost guarantee this picture was indeed taken in 2008. In fact, did you know it snowed on April 12th and April 19th in Kansas this year? APRIL! What is this world coming to?!

6 comments:

Reagan said...

Yeah that is really strange...i've never noticed that before...but maybe i'm just not that observant.

Unknown said...

that's pretty crazy!

Jason Jaeger said...

It is obviously up to something. I would keep an eye on it if I were you. If it starts to do anything else out of the ordinary (shooting electric bolts, warping the space/time continuum... that sort of thing) I would report it to the proper authorities immediately.

MagenRanae said...

Jason,

Thanks for commenting on my blog! That gave me quite the laugh this morning!

I shared what you said with my hubby and he said, "No wonder Joy is in love with him!!"

tsbjf said...

This question really got my curiosity, so I googled it. After reading several different pages worth, here is my summary. Basically there are two things going on at once to make this happen. The bark on the tree absorbs energy from the sun which in turn makes the surrounding snow melt, and also the snow melting on the tree turns to water and mixes with the snow on the ground. Snow that is more wet is a better conductor of heat than powdery snow, so that makes it melt faster as well.

Jason Jaeger said...

kudos on the research tsbjf!