Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's that blueberry bagel that tastes like onions
Speaker 1: because it pressed its face into an everything bagel. Alie
Speaker 1: Ward back with another episode of Ologies. It's the middle
Speaker 1: of January and here in the Northern Hemisphere, lips are chopped,
Speaker 1: feet are cold, Parkers are on. I'm here to give
Speaker 1: you a snow job. But first, thank you to everyone
Speaker 1: who supports on Patreon and who gets merch, including the
Speaker 1: new black T shirts Yes at ologiesmirch dot com. Of course,
Speaker 1: thanks to everyone who rates and subscribes, who leaves reviews
Speaker 1: on iTunes. You know I read them, you know I
Speaker 1: read them. For example, this week, thank you to Evie,
Speaker 1: who said, in the hopes of Ali noticing me, hey,
Speaker 1: I gotta say that this podcast just recently got me
Speaker 1: through some pretty bad flying anxiety. So thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for taking me into the sky with you, Evie.
Speaker 1: Also Evan DK, I hope you and your pops are
Speaker 1: feeling okay. Okay, So snow snow, not just snow, but big, cold, crumbly, scary,
Speaker 1: dangerous avalanches. What the hell are they?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: I searched far and wide for a snow expert, and
Speaker 1: I connected with a dude who got his PhD in
Speaker 1: Environmental Science and Management from the University of California, Santa
Speaker 1: Barbara up place Stephen Ray Morris and I both attended.
Speaker 1: But this guy is primarily based up near Mammoth Mountain,
Speaker 1: which is technically a giant lava dome complex Frickin Volcano
Speaker 1: near Yosemite. It's chill. He does not live in la
Speaker 1: because hello, there's snow snow here, but he would be
Speaker 1: passing through Lax on a six hour layover. I coincidentally
Speaker 1: was also flying into Lax that night, so we had
Speaker 1: plans to meet up in a terminal, and then my
Speaker 1: flight was delayed because of snow. It's cute, snow cute,
Speaker 1: so we made another plan. He had another layover at
Speaker 1: Lax a few weeks later, right before the holidays, and
Speaker 1: I drove down there and I waited on a bench
Speaker 1: outside Lax for him with my zoom A, rolling to
Speaker 1: rendezvous at high noon and talk snow. One issue my
Speaker 1: phone was dying, and Lax is huge some days I'm like,
Speaker 1: why am I such a garbage? Also, just a little
Speaker 1: audio note, So, as mentioned, this was recorded on a
Speaker 1: bench at LAX, and so there were a lot of
Speaker 1: ambient noises that we were competing with, and so it's
Speaker 1: not to be annoying. We tried to cut around them
Speaker 1: as best we could, but it's a little bit less
Speaker 1: smooth than most episodes. So if this is the very
Speaker 1: very first episode you're ever listening to, the audio is
Speaker 1: a little different on this one, please bear with us.
Speaker 1: Forgive us. The contents totally worth it, as you're going
Speaker 1: to hear, it was an adventure and you're about to
Speaker 1: learn about the beauty and architecture of snowflakes or either
Speaker 1: so bright white, What to do with you're stranded in snow,
Speaker 1: How avalanches happen, how to survive one, digging out your
Speaker 1: car one oh one, and the best snow for a
Speaker 1: snowball fight. Also how climate change affects snowpack and the
Speaker 1: really riveting backstory of skier avalanche expert and snow hydrologist
Speaker 1: doctor Ned Bar. I thought that was Ned. That wasn't Ned.
Speaker 1: My phone is at two percent. I am at the
Speaker 1: appointed meeting place. It is eleven fifty nine. I do
Speaker 1: not see Ned. My phone has two percent for us
Speaker 1: to meet up with each other before this gets real tragic.
Speaker 1: Oh god, how was it not plugged in? My lord,
Speaker 1: my phone is now at one percent. I see someone walking,
Speaker 1: Please be ned, Please be ned? Are you ned? Yes?
Speaker 3: Hi dad?
Speaker 1: And where did you grow up? Because you're based in
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara or you work out of UCSB? I do?
Speaker 3: I work for UCSB? Yep? I with lakes?
Speaker 1: And where are you from?
Speaker 3: Originally Alexandria, Virginia.
Speaker 1: Do they have snow there?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Oh, how did this happen?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I grew up skiing in winter Green, Virginia, m a
Speaker 2: thousand vertical feet something like thirty inches of annual snowfall.
Speaker 2: I went to school in Maine, went to bat in
Speaker 2: college and skied more there. And then after college, I
Speaker 2: went and my parents weren't too happy about this and
Speaker 2: became a ski patroller and did that for ten years.
Speaker 1: So they like, can you not break all of your bones?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well that's not really what they wanted me to go
Speaker 2: to college to do.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's not the safest job either, but I
Speaker 3: loved it.
Speaker 1: I mean, have you been called a ski bum by
Speaker 1: your family?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I've definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've always said that I've wanted to live in a
Speaker 2: ski town for as long as I can remember, and
Speaker 2: so I've sort of managed to do that with a
Speaker 2: professional career. I woint of traveling in a fair bit,
Speaker 2: but also just a lot of time on the computer.
Speaker 1: How did you make the leap from being ski patrol
Speaker 1: for you said ten years to do you have a
Speaker 1: PhD in snow hydrology. How did you go from like,
Speaker 1: you know, air quote ski bum to doctor snow dude.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of a long story.
Speaker 2: But I was working as a patroller and my second
Speaker 2: so was part of that was I was doing my
Speaker 2: PhD while I was still ski patrolling at the end.
Speaker 2: But I had a friend on ski patrol who is
Speaker 2: sort of a mentor for me. His name was Walter Rosenthal.
Speaker 2: He was he was an old patroller, is in his
Speaker 2: mid fifties, and he kind of took me under his
Speaker 2: wing and taught me a lot about snow and digging
Speaker 2: these massive snow pits, you know, like three Sierra snowpack
Speaker 2: because this is really deep.
Speaker 3: At least in the.
Speaker 2: Good it varies, but it can be very deep. And
Speaker 2: so we would be digging these pits and doing these
Speaker 2: you know, crystal identification and stuff like that, I mean
Speaker 2: really deep.
Speaker 3: And he just was a really he loved it. I
Speaker 3: mean he was a guy.
Speaker 2: He's probably one of the only people I've ever met,
Speaker 2: I think, liked to dig more in the snow to
Speaker 2: do anything else.
Speaker 3: So he's kind of like a human backo. And anyway,
Speaker 3: so Walter was.
Speaker 2: My friend on ski patrol, and he taught me a
Speaker 2: lot about the snow and I was patrolling and I
Speaker 2: was kind of looking for something a little more cerebral
Speaker 2: to do, you know. I loved working as a ski patroller.
Speaker 2: I should say this. Walter had a history. He was
Speaker 2: a scientist. Also also worked at e C. Santa Barbara,
Speaker 2: and he had done a bunch of work with remote
Speaker 2: sensing and satellite based mapping at the snowpack and stuff
Speaker 2: that I'm doing now. But what he really liked to
Speaker 2: do is avalanche research, which there's there's almost no funding.
Speaker 3: For in the US. Really, it's what I like to do.
Speaker 2: It's what I wrote my dissertation on, right, And so anyway,
Speaker 2: Walter got an NSF grant with his advisor, Jeff Doser
Speaker 2: to study centering mechanisms in the snowpack, so like how
Speaker 2: snow grains bond together. He was looking at soluble impurities
Speaker 2: in the snowpack and using a scanning electron microscope and
Speaker 2: looking at the geometric struct sure and how the next
Speaker 2: form between him.
Speaker 3: And stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Walter just got this NSF grant and then in
Speaker 2: April of two thousand and six, he was killed with
Speaker 2: three other ski patrollers when a volcanic event on Mammoth
Speaker 2: Mountain collapsed.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was it was. It was a really
Speaker 2: rough ty it actually it happened right next to me.
Speaker 2: I was there when it happened, and he was actually
Speaker 2: killed trying to rescue the other patrollers. So it was
Speaker 2: really Uh yeah, it was a tough, a tough time
Speaker 2: in my life. Not an experience that I, you know,
Speaker 2: had a really hard time getting over. But anyway, Walter's advisor,
Speaker 2: Jeff came to me and asked me if I wanted
Speaker 2: to go to grad school on this NSF grant. Wow,
Speaker 2: no longer had a PhD student to do the research.
Speaker 1: What an impact that must have had on you?
Speaker 3: It did, it had.
Speaker 2: It had a pretty big impact on me. After college.
Speaker 2: I was a ski patroller and I was a climbing guide,
Speaker 2: and I was kind of a climbing bomb ski bump,
Speaker 2: and I pretty soon after that got married and you know,
Speaker 2: I started living, not living out of my truck as
Speaker 2: much anyway.
Speaker 3: And yeah, now I have two little kids and it
Speaker 3: was a tough experience.
Speaker 2: I guess I should mention so James Juarez and Scott
Speaker 2: mcandrew's or the two other patrollers who were killed.
Speaker 1: Well fencing off the area from skiers, Scotty and James
Speaker 1: fell through the snow twenty feet into the volcanic vent,
Speaker 1: and Walter, who wasn't supposed to be working but had
Speaker 1: returned because of the storm, went after Scotty and James
Speaker 1: to save them. All three died of asphyxiation in the
Speaker 1: volcanic gases, namely the heavier CO two. Several others were
Speaker 1: injured in the rescue efforts. And I just learned that
Speaker 1: when volcanic gases reach noxious strengths, they're called a muzuku,
Speaker 1: which in Swahili means an evil wind. It's dangerous.
Speaker 2: So if you ever ski at Mammoth Mountain, there's a
Speaker 2: I think called a fumarole that's on the Chair three
Speaker 2: area and its spews out volcanic gases, hydrogen sulfide, which
Speaker 2: is really toxic, lots of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and
Speaker 2: it's sort of fine if it's not capped over, if
Speaker 2: it's open and it's venting. But this year was a
Speaker 2: really large snow year. This was April of two thousand
Speaker 2: and six, and so it actually capped over for the
Speaker 2: first time that a lot of people who've been there
Speaker 2: for decades could remember. And so these gases sort of
Speaker 2: just sat there and they actually formed like an underground
Speaker 2: chamber that I don't really know, and snowbridge collapsed, and yeah,
Speaker 2: we're pulling up fencing because they're just like fencing to
Speaker 2: keep skewers out of the fumarole.
Speaker 1: There are tons of videos on YouTube of skiers and
Speaker 1: snowboarders stopping at this fenced off plume to just wonder
Speaker 1: at it, and many pay their respects, and a Stowe
Speaker 1: memorial is up at Mammoths Summit to remember the three
Speaker 1: and even ten years after the incident, hundreds gathered at
Speaker 1: Mammoth to observe the anniversary. The community is still pretty
Speaker 1: rocked by it. And so did you have a hard
Speaker 1: time because it was maybe such a visceral and traumatic
Speaker 1: experience to go back to this kind of science, or
Speaker 1: did it make you more passionate about kind of state
Speaker 1: the safety of it.
Speaker 2: I think both. I don't know, it's sort of a
Speaker 2: complicated question.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I wasn't going to change my life radically and you know,
Speaker 2: go off and live in a city and do that.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have been happy doing that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it certainly made me think a lot about
Speaker 2: the mountains and taking risks. This snowbridge collapsed right next
Speaker 2: to me. It was a couple of feet away, so
Speaker 2: it could have very easily been me falling in for
Speaker 2: the fumarole.
Speaker 1: So wow, yeah, and you're a young person too, I mean, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was this. I was twenty six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And so what is it about snow that
Speaker 1: you that you love? What keeps bringing you back to it?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, growing up, it was always sort of
Speaker 2: an federal thing, and I didn't get to see it
Speaker 2: very much. And I think I think all kids, you know,
Speaker 2: love snow. It's obviously no school and at least in
Speaker 2: the DC area, so it has nice early memories and
Speaker 2: impressions for me. I think later on, well, I love
Speaker 2: the avalanche part of it. I think the avalanche world
Speaker 2: is fascinating and there are a lot of avenues that
Speaker 2: haven't been explored scientifically.
Speaker 1: So I note this is where I found out what
Speaker 1: ski patrolling means. I honestly, I thought it was just
Speaker 1: like buzzing around the slopes, kind of making sure everyone's okay,
Speaker 1: kind of like a lifeguard, but with no speedos and
Speaker 1: more skis. Turns out I did not know anything about
Speaker 1: ski patrolling.
Speaker 2: You go out with explosives and you set off avalanches
Speaker 2: and wait, throw dynamite out your hand.
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't know that. Yeah, I thought you were
Speaker 1: just making sure no one failed.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, you do active avalanche control. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you shoot howitzers and oh my god, I throw dynamite,
Speaker 2: and so it's fun how.
Speaker 1: It served, By the way, is a freaking World War
Speaker 1: two cannon, you guys, It's a cannon. To look it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these avalanches are very difficult to predict, and it's
Speaker 2: not always so clear what causes a really large one
Speaker 2: versus a small one. And you know, they're just sort
Speaker 2: of spectacular too, I mean, just the size of the
Speaker 2: debris and the large blocks and damage you know that
Speaker 2: they can cause. And you can see all kinds of
Speaker 2: markings on you know, mostly in the Sierra and most
Speaker 2: of the United States, most of these happened in wilderness areas,
Speaker 2: so that the marketing, you know, it's trees that are destroyed,
Speaker 2: not like in the Alps or there's more infrastructure. They
Speaker 2: have a lot of history with damage to buildings and
Speaker 2: things like that.
Speaker 1: This is no joke. Each year around one hundred people
Speaker 1: are killed by alpine avalanches, but due to really crazy
Speaker 1: snowfall lately, twenty six lives have been lost just this
Speaker 1: past month. Just a few days ago, two ski patrollers
Speaker 1: in France were killed detonating explosives to trigger an avalanche.
Speaker 1: So the shit is risky. Are there How many avalanches
Speaker 1: are there in Manma per year?
Speaker 3: Do you think in Mammoth? I don't know. A couple thousand.
Speaker 1: Really, Oh my god, I had no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean because you know that when they're triggered
Speaker 2: like that, you have a lot more of them throughout
Speaker 2: the US.
Speaker 3: I don't know, one hundred thousand a year or something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: What's the death toll there.
Speaker 2: Well, it's been going down. It's in sort of the
Speaker 2: mid twenties. It's actually been sort of staying steady or
Speaker 2: going down, which is probably due to a number of factors. Airbags,
Speaker 2: better education, better awareness. The avalanche centers do a great
Speaker 2: job with warning people during those high snowfall periods and
Speaker 2: other times when you know the metamorphism has produced layering
Speaker 2: that's unstable.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, more on those airbags in a bit. As
Speaker 1: for avalanches, these metamorphosisms in layering just mean that there's
Speaker 1: less stability with a snowshelf depending on what kind of
Speaker 1: layers are underneath it. So maybe some wetter, warmer snow
Speaker 1: or a layer of refrozen ice kind of stacking and stacking,
Speaker 1: kind of like an icy club sandwich. So a steep slope,
Speaker 1: heavy snow cover, a weak layer in the snow, plus
Speaker 1: some kind of trigger, and you have a slide that
Speaker 1: can vary from pretty harmless size one to a size
Speaker 1: two that can bury a person, a three can bury
Speaker 1: a car, and a four can destroy structures and go
Speaker 1: up to eighty miles an hour within a few seconds,
Speaker 1: which is about twice as fast as my two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven PRIs and thus deserves much more respect.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they're exciting, But then also just snow is
Speaker 2: a really fascinating material. As Walter always used to say,
Speaker 2: snow is hot, and which means that it's very close
Speaker 2: to its melting temperature almost everywhere on Earth. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: you know, because it's pretty warm compared to like the
Speaker 2: rest of the planets in our Solar system, and well
Speaker 2: at least the ones past Earth.
Speaker 1: Going back to a really basic question, what is snow?
Speaker 1: What's the deal with snowflakes? Are they all unique? Like?
Speaker 1: If I know nothing about snow, what are the basics?
Speaker 1: I know it's a stupid question, but I don't care.
Speaker 2: My advisor, Jeff Doser, he had a thing where he
Speaker 2: went to Disney for the Frozen movie. They had salting
Speaker 2: work where he showed up and give him some pointers
Speaker 2: on snowflakes, which I thought were pretty good. And actually
Speaker 2: and Carl Barkland, who's actually also on my PhD committee,
Speaker 2: and I thought between them they had some pretty good points.
Speaker 1: Are you ready for this beautiful icy point. It's gonna
Speaker 1: melt your brains.
Speaker 2: Jeff made the point that snowflakes, you know, they grow
Speaker 2: by accretion, meaning that there's like condensation, nuclei dust they
Speaker 2: grow out of that. So you can't have ones with
Speaker 2: holes in the middle, which you see a lot, especially
Speaker 2: around now when people are making snowflake decorations for Christmas.
Speaker 2: So no holes in the middle. They have to have
Speaker 2: six sides. Okay, no pentagons or you know anything like that, right,
Speaker 2: they go from six sided hexagonal water crystals.
Speaker 1: So for kindergartener is out there making a paper snowflake
Speaker 1: with a hole in the middle, definitely yell at them,
Speaker 1: just mercilessly, because frankly, they're never going to learn otherwise,
Speaker 1: humiliate them. Don't do that. Also for a four second
Speaker 1: lesson on hexagonal water crystals, okay, has this? So water
Speaker 1: is two hydrogens and an oxygen atom, and because of
Speaker 1: how much molecules slow down in the cold, the hydrogen
Speaker 1: bonds allow the water molecules to link up in such
Speaker 1: a way that they form a hexagonal lattice structure, which
Speaker 1: is of course why some snowflakes have six sides. Okay,
Speaker 1: what else did the scientists tell the mouse at Disney?
Speaker 2: So Carl also made the point that you cannot yell
Speaker 2: and cause of snow avalanche, Okay, doesn't happen like I
Speaker 2: guess it happened in the movie Heidi.
Speaker 1: Okay, I just spent like an hour digging all over
Speaker 1: for this Heidi clip. But he may have been thinking
Speaker 1: of another mountain movie, which incidentally, and I love Lucy
Speaker 1: episode cited.
Speaker 3: Now, don't make a sound, sat all that snow hanging
Speaker 3: over our heads a loud noise to cause an avalanche.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 1: I read it in a book and you remember that
Speaker 1: picture Seven Brides for seven Brothers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Somebody shot a pistol caused a great, big avalanche. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: don't anybody move, Okay. Also, I went and looked up
Speaker 1: seven Brides for seven Brothers, and from what I can gather,
Speaker 1: it involves a bunch of related horny frontiersmen who romantically
Speaker 1: straight up kidnap women. So I feel like, yes, this
Speaker 1: pistol triggering an avalanche plot point is problematic, but not
Speaker 1: as much as it's kind of lighthearted, musical take on
Speaker 1: human trafficking.
Speaker 2: I guess you went to try and stop that urban
Speaker 2: rural legend from perpetuating.
Speaker 1: So that's a big debunker of flim flam. That's flim flam.
Speaker 1: You can't scream and cause an avalanche, Nope, Okay, to
Speaker 1: scream your head off in the mountains if you need to, Uh, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: good to know. Sometimes that's why you go to the mountains.
Speaker 1: It's just to scream your head off. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you go back and you say everything's fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, So.
Speaker 1: Okay, snow. Where does snow form in the atmosphere? Does
Speaker 1: it form right above our heads? Does it form way
Speaker 1: above us?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Where when does it? How does a snowflake become a snowflake?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Pretty high up.
Speaker 2: I mean it depends on the level of the clouds
Speaker 2: and you know how deep the storm is and where
Speaker 2: the moisture is. But yeah, I mean, this is all
Speaker 2: the lower atmosphere if you're an atmospheric scientist, But for
Speaker 2: people like me, study what's going on in the ground
Speaker 2: at pretty high up klometers above our heads. And it
Speaker 2: starts off frozen actually because it's cold up there, but
Speaker 2: it turns to raine if it's.
Speaker 1: Not cold enough so to recap water vapor and cold temperatures,
Speaker 1: turns to ice crystals around a piece of dust or
Speaker 1: pollen aka condensation nuclei, and then it falls through the
Speaker 1: air and tumbles and grows, and in warmer air it'll
Speaker 1: melt a little at the edges and form clumps with
Speaker 1: other flakes, resulting in heavier, wet, fluffy snow. And if
Speaker 1: it falls through colder air, it's less likely to stick
Speaker 1: together and it falls as smaller, drier and powdery snow.
Speaker 1: Also side note, I just went down some YouTube poles
Speaker 1: trying to see different sized snowflakes, and one thing I
Speaker 1: didn't need to know about was the video of a
Speaker 1: guy silently scratching dandruff, which quote falls like snow and
Speaker 1: has forty thousand views. Mine now, being one of them
Speaker 1: human beings, we're all a little different into each of their
Speaker 1: own snowflakes being unique, yes or no.
Speaker 2: Yes, you can find snowflakes that are pretty similar, okay,
Speaker 2: you know, but they all grow by this pretty complex
Speaker 2: accretion process where there's just a lot of water vapor condensing.
Speaker 2: It's called deposition when it's going straight from vapor to
Speaker 2: solid like that. But I think usually what people are
Speaker 2: referring to, and I think when they talk about, you know,
Speaker 2: how two snowflakes are alike, is that the weather is
Speaker 2: kind of constantly changing, right, and so that causes a
Speaker 2: difference in the crystal habits they call them, that are
Speaker 2: coming out of the sky. Wilson Bentley is taking pictures
Speaker 2: of snowflakes, I think over one hundred years ago, around
Speaker 2: one hundred in Vermont, and there's been all sorts of
Speaker 2: people photographing snowflakes.
Speaker 1: Wilson Bentley of Vermont by the Bye was a pioneer
Speaker 1: in the fields of teeny tiny weather photography and snapped
Speaker 1: his first snowflake picture in the late eighteen eighties by
Speaker 1: attaching a camera to a microscope. And he famously was
Speaker 1: the one that argued that no two snow crystals were alike.
Speaker 1: And then he died at the age of sixty six
Speaker 1: after walking six miles in a blizzard. Oh Man, snow
Speaker 1: is a bitchy mistress. But what makes all of these
Speaker 1: glimmering icy flakes so fancy?
Speaker 2: It has to do with the temperature and the super satuation,
Speaker 2: So like relative humidity, you get sort of a different
Speaker 2: snowflake form. And they can be anything from you know,
Speaker 2: dendrites like the classic snowflake, to like needles, to capped
Speaker 2: columns to there's a number of different sectored plates. I
Speaker 2: didn't know that Ken Libreckt has a nice book of
Speaker 2: coffee table book of snowflakes.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, Ken Lebreck is a Caltech physics professor who
Speaker 1: is probably the world's best snowflakehotographer, Like he can say,
Speaker 1: hands down, it's him now. Among his many books are Snowflakes,
Speaker 1: Winter's Frozen Artistry, and Ken le Breck's Field Guide to Snowflakes.
Speaker 1: If you're like, yes, I'm ordering those right now, but
Speaker 1: Alli Ward, I need to see photographs immediately before my
Speaker 1: books are delivered, I understand, and I direct you toward
Speaker 1: his website, Snowcrystals dot com, which also lays out all
Speaker 1: the different types of snowflakes, such as stellar dendrites, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a European electronica band, but they're actually the
Speaker 1: classic pretty star shaped ones. And then there's capped columns,
Speaker 1: which are snowflakes that look like a hand weight from
Speaker 1: the gym, or like a tiny, tiny icy tie fighter.
Speaker 1: And then there's this shimmering diamond dust crystals. There are
Speaker 1: triangular snowflakes. So looking through the gallery, one can't help
Speaker 1: it say, snowflakes. I have no idea. Yeah, are you
Speaker 1: ever irked by people using the term snowflake politically as
Speaker 1: an insult?
Speaker 3: You thought about that?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: It doesn't bother me.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess you know it makes sense, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a funny question, like the classic snowflake
Speaker 2: that we were talking about the dendrite. Right, those are
Speaker 2: delicate and they do fracture and break apart easily. That's
Speaker 2: not so much the case in the Sierra, for instance,
Speaker 2: or most mountain ranges where it's windy. The snow that
Speaker 2: falls there, well, for one thing, it's not really falling,
Speaker 2: it's usually coming sideways because the winds are so strong.
Speaker 2: There's a process called fragmentation by the wind where the
Speaker 2: crystals are just mechanically blown apart. Oh wow, So like
Speaker 2: they might start off, you know, and the clouds as
Speaker 2: nice dendrites, but by the time they get to the surface,
Speaker 2: they're blown apart.
Speaker 1: Kind of like how at the beginning of the night
Speaker 1: you might be perfectly orderly, just a complex and symmetrical vision,
Speaker 1: but then maybe it's one am and one shoe broke
Speaker 1: and an eyelash fell off and you got redeposited at
Speaker 1: a diner instead of a dis go, if you will.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, snowflakes they can actually be pretty durable. And
Speaker 2: they look different like those ones are. You know, they're small,
Speaker 2: they're like little specks, you know, versus larger you know,
Speaker 2: all snowflakes probably look smaller to people, but right they
Speaker 2: some are much much smaller. You know, like an order
Speaker 2: of magnitude smaller, especially when they're disaggregated like that.
Speaker 1: And then what's happening with a hailstone? What's the difference there?
Speaker 2: So a hailstone is something that's liquid, but then because
Speaker 2: of updraft, it comes back up and is refrozen and
Speaker 2: it's usual turbulence and yeah, wow.
Speaker 1: So it's a rain drop. It almost hits the ground
Speaker 1: and then it's like nope, a head up to the clouds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hailstorms I just learned, are different from grapple, which is
Speaker 1: when super cooled water forms around a snowflake and it
Speaker 1: looks like hail, but it's not. Kind of like a
Speaker 1: ball of ice made up of tiny balls of ice
Speaker 1: encasing symmetrical ice crystals that formed around a speck of something.
Speaker 1: It's just layers and layers.
Speaker 3: Of drawn huh.
Speaker 1: And then at the center of each snowflake, is there
Speaker 1: a speck of dust?
Speaker 2: Uh, there's some kind of condensation nuclear it could be
Speaker 2: like salt, but yeah, it's basically dust for the most part.
Speaker 1: And then let's get back a little bit to your
Speaker 1: patrol days and avalanches and so what is causing an avalanche?
Speaker 1: How much snowpack do you have to have to cause
Speaker 1: an avalanche, and what is it? Essentially? Is it a
Speaker 1: shelf of snow that just slips off a mountain? That
Speaker 1: was an avalanche of questions. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Ground is pretty much always right around freezing, so you know,
Speaker 2: zero centigrade thirty two fahrenheit, But the snow surface can
Speaker 2: really vary, in fact, right at the surfaces where all
Speaker 2: the radiative transfer takes place, so that it can get
Speaker 2: really cold.
Speaker 1: You're like, quick, let me look at your notes on
Speaker 1: radiative transfer. But I gotta admit, dog, I just copied
Speaker 1: these off Wikipedia's test. But okay. Radiative transfer is the
Speaker 1: physical phenomenon of energy transfer in the form of electromagnetic radiation.
Speaker 1: So the surface of the snow can melt and then
Speaker 1: get very cold again. I think that's what that means.
Speaker 2: That can grow different crystals. So that's where you can
Speaker 2: get snow that changes once it's on the ground. It
Speaker 2: becomes weaker because of the metamorphic process, and there's all
Speaker 2: kinds of different ones. And also new snow is just
Speaker 2: it's much weaker than older snow typically, and so if
Speaker 2: you're on a steep enough slope, it ca an avalanche.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot to the avalanche. It has to
Speaker 2: form a slab, which is like a sort of cohesive
Speaker 2: like a shelf like you're talking about. Yeah, that is
Speaker 2: much more dangerous than You can also have avalanches that
Speaker 2: are more like something you see on a sandpile. It's
Speaker 2: like a slough, and that's where it's not so well
Speaker 2: stuck together. Snow is just inherently like a lot of
Speaker 2: geologic it's materials. It's a layered medium, right, depending on
Speaker 2: what happened with the weather and how it fell and
Speaker 2: all that, it has different layers and they can have
Speaker 2: different strengths if you get that the correct layering, and
Speaker 2: you do have the block or shelf and slides downhill
Speaker 2: and then you know the slope angle matters.
Speaker 1: So what causes most avalanches if not people screaming at them?
Speaker 2: Well, new snow, I mean, and this goes back to
Speaker 2: Manti Atwater and the fifties. There's ten contributory factors.
Speaker 1: Okay, So side note. Montgomery Atwater of Alta, Colorado is
Speaker 1: the granddaddy of avalanche research. He is the dude. He's
Speaker 1: also the first one who thought, well, holy hell shit,
Speaker 1: let's launch small missiles at a mountain to make controlled
Speaker 1: avalanches happen. Everyone's like Monty dope idea. Now his was
Speaker 1: not a work I was familiar with. But among the
Speaker 1: ten contributory factors are things like old snow depth, new
Speaker 1: snow depth, slope angle, temperature, and Atwater's work has now
Speaker 1: become like avalanche one oh one, like the no doy
Speaker 1: of ic nar Nars.
Speaker 3: We've known this for a long time.
Speaker 2: It's when you have new snow, especially a lot of
Speaker 2: new snow, it stresses the snowback. That's when you get adeline.
Speaker 2: There's other things, you know, skiers. I mean, it's stress, really,
Speaker 2: is what it is.
Speaker 3: Skiers.
Speaker 2: You can exert stress through what's called the stress ball.
Speaker 2: They're affecting this weak layers. But yeah, the avalanche hazard
Speaker 2: really goes up with a lot of new snow.
Speaker 1: And so tell me a little bit about your work
Speaker 1: blowing up these shelves of ice.
Speaker 2: So when I was a ski patroller, and ski patrollers
Speaker 2: all across the country and all across the world do
Speaker 2: this every time it snows. And you know a significant
Speaker 2: amount in big ski resorts in the Western US and
Speaker 2: the Alps all over they throw explosives at the snow
Speaker 2: pack to trigger avalanches so that they don't come down
Speaker 2: on the gas er skiing there. And it's very much
Speaker 2: an old fashioned cowboy wave controlling the hazard because you
Speaker 2: light these sticks of dynamite in your hand or a
Speaker 2: lot of place, Mamma still use dynamite, but a lot
Speaker 2: of places use some kind of cast primer. But you know, anyway,
Speaker 2: it's a high explosive and and throw it at the
Speaker 2: you know, and watch it go off and see what happens.
Speaker 3: And a lot of time nothing happens.
Speaker 1: But oh my god, what does that sound like? The
Speaker 1: whole shebang?
Speaker 3: Oh? It's very loud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you want to watch out and damage that
Speaker 2: you don't make sure that you you try to cover
Speaker 2: your ears as well as you can, but of course
Speaker 2: you need, you know, to be able to talk on
Speaker 2: the radio and stuff like that, so it's hard to
Speaker 2: totally keep your ears plugged all the time.
Speaker 1: What does an avalanche sound like itself?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I get that question a lot. Usually there's silent
Speaker 3: what yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2: So I've talked about this with other people who've seen
Speaker 2: bigger avalanches than I have, and they say that you
Speaker 2: can hear them when they're really big. Especially a lot
Speaker 2: of times, like when they're breaking stuff, you hear the
Speaker 2: stuff that they're breaking, like the trees.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of friction being you know.
Speaker 2: Down frictional heating and stuff with these massive avalanches. But yeah,
Speaker 2: like most avalanches, there's size scale like one to five,
Speaker 2: say for destructive size.
Speaker 3: And you know, most of the.
Speaker 2: Avalanches I've seen or destructive size three maybe two to
Speaker 2: three and pretty silent.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. And then have you ever triggered one
Speaker 1: that surprised you, that was like, oh, that was bigger
Speaker 1: than I thought.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I got caught in a couple
Speaker 2: of them as a ski patroller. And it's just one
Speaker 2: of the you know, hazards of the job. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of the public, I don't know what sort
Speaker 2: of risks ski patrollers are subjecting themselves to to get
Speaker 2: that mountain open. You know, it can be really dangerous
Speaker 2: because for one thing, after done with the explosives, a
Speaker 2: lot of the slopes will be ski cut ps.
Speaker 1: I did have to look up what ski cutting is,
Speaker 1: and it's when a ski patroller intentionally skis across a
Speaker 1: dangerous pocket to maybe start an avalanche, aka in actual nightmare.
Speaker 1: They do actual nightmares? Did I mention? They're not just
Speaker 1: like hanging out in case you need a band aid.
Speaker 3: To clean up.
Speaker 2: And there's some places you don't want to ski cut,
Speaker 2: and you won't ski cut, but sometimes there's just little
Speaker 2: pockets that have to be dealt with. There's sort of
Speaker 2: a systematic process for doing that. But it means you're
Speaker 2: you know, inexposed. You you can be really exposed. And
Speaker 2: that's how I've gotten caught in the few avalanches that
Speaker 2: I've been in, has always.
Speaker 3: Been ski cutting.
Speaker 1: Did you dig your way out?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: I didn't get fully buried, so mostly just went for
Speaker 2: a ride, you know, a couple hundred feet like buried
Speaker 2: up to my waist that kind of thing. Oh man,
Speaker 2: So yeah, but you know I never got hurt in
Speaker 2: an avalanche.
Speaker 1: That was just like a Tuesday at the office.
Speaker 3: For you, I guess. Yeah. It's a hard thing with
Speaker 3: the ski cutting.
Speaker 2: You know, it's kind of a controversial practice, but you know,
Speaker 2: if you really think about it, it's it's something that
Speaker 2: you can't get away from as a ski patroller.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's certain areas they're always gonna have to
Speaker 3: ski cut.
Speaker 1: So oh man, what do you do? To warm up
Speaker 1: when you've done this. Is it Is there part of
Speaker 1: working in snow that involves going to a lodge and
Speaker 1: drinking cocoa or is that just a fantasy that I have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it depends on where you are. I mean
Speaker 2: when I was keep patrolling, there's ski patrol shacks where
Speaker 2: you sit bump, which means you wait for like someone
Speaker 2: to get hurt and then you you know, and you
Speaker 2: try to keep one or two people up there at
Speaker 2: all times so that someone you because you want to
Speaker 2: go downhill to get people when you're out in the
Speaker 2: field for some of these you know, like doing snow research,
Speaker 2: like for instance, I'm involved in this NASA snowex experiment,
Speaker 2: which is a large field campaign for validating some instruments
Speaker 2: that be flown on planes. You know, if you're in
Speaker 2: that wilderness sort of a setting, yeah, there's nowhere to go,
Speaker 2: so you just try to really bring a lot of
Speaker 2: warm clothes and moving, I mean moving around is really
Speaker 2: the best thing you can do. It's really cold, but
Speaker 2: sometimes it just sucks, like you're just a really cold
Speaker 2: and you know, you bring extra like especially when you're
Speaker 2: doing a lot of snowpedwork, your gloves get like, even
Speaker 2: if they're you know, whatever, the best court gloves you
Speaker 2: can get, are they get soaking wet, so you know,
Speaker 2: rum multiple pairs of gloves and switch them and and yeah,
Speaker 2: sometimes it's just cold and miserable. And that's just you know,
Speaker 2: my hands get cold. I'm not sure they get especially cold,
Speaker 2: but I'm definitely not. I definitely have problems with that.
Speaker 2: And it can be no fun. Sometimes you can be
Speaker 2: freezing cold in some pretty cool places. I guess, right,
Speaker 2: I guess cool. I guess I should think cool is
Speaker 2: a poor choice of the word. There's a lot of beauty.
Speaker 2: I guess that makes up for it.
Speaker 1: And what is the research that you're doing right now?
Speaker 1: Focus on?
Speaker 2: Okay, So what I do now is I do a
Speaker 2: large scale hydrologic and remote sensing work. So I'm doing
Speaker 2: snowpack astimates across large areas and concentrating in high mountain Asia,
Speaker 2: in particularly in the western parts of high mountain Asia,
Speaker 2: like Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Upper Indus River, which is
Speaker 2: huge source of drinking water, particularly like Afghanistan, and a
Speaker 2: lot of the Upper Indus shares of climatological similarities with California.
Speaker 2: And then it kind of a wet winter and then
Speaker 2: a dry it's more continental and it is different, but
Speaker 2: dry summer and it's not monsoon dominated. It's mostly water
Speaker 2: resources work to estimate snowpacked volumes because because the snow,
Speaker 2: it sort of acts as a reservoir because it's frozen
Speaker 2: up there, and then if you're in a place like
Speaker 2: afghanister in California conveniently starts melting in the summer, which
Speaker 2: is the dry season.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feeds the rivers.
Speaker 2: Going back to the stuff about the spatial variability in
Speaker 2: the snowpack, it's it's a tough thing to figure out
Speaker 2: how much snow is up there. And the two big
Speaker 2: problems right are like how much is up there and
Speaker 2: how fast is it going to melt?
Speaker 3: When's it going to melt?
Speaker 2: But in a place like Afghanistan, there's no snowpack measurements,
Speaker 2: so the rivers will just go dry in September and
Speaker 2: it's a humanitarian crisis. And so we can we can
Speaker 2: kind of help out with that a little bit with
Speaker 2: the remote sensing by giving an idea of what sort
Speaker 2: of runoff to expect based on how much snow is
Speaker 2: up there, and that can be really useful for hu
Speaker 2: managed aid and lead lead times.
Speaker 1: And stupid question. Favorite or least favorite movie about snow
Speaker 1: or ice or avalanches?
Speaker 3: Least favorite or favorite?
Speaker 1: Yeah, whatever, whatever you have a reaction to.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm trying to remember the name of the movie,
Speaker 2: but it was really bad. It was Josh Hartnett was
Speaker 2: in it and he got there's this guy who got
Speaker 2: lost off the back of Mammoth Mountain.
Speaker 1: Okay, I looked into it and it was six degrees
Speaker 1: Miracle on the Mountain about a guy who loses this
Speaker 1: way I think math is involved, and then is like,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll clear my head shredding on some fresh powder.
Speaker 1: I said it away for a few days, enjoy the mountain.
Speaker 1: There always do any whosel A storm comes, but it's
Speaker 1: not just the winter that's harsh. This movie scored a
Speaker 1: twenty two with critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
Speaker 2: I was not a big fan of this. This film
Speaker 2: went straight. I don't think it even made it to
Speaker 2: the theaters.
Speaker 3: It's not orth.
Speaker 2: Even I'm remembering. This happened while I was patrolling the
Speaker 2: made of movie out of it. There were wolves and
Speaker 2: there's like, you know there are no wolves and have
Speaker 2: sort of this terrible I mean not to. I think
Speaker 2: maybe a better filmmaker could have made the story more
Speaker 2: convincing anyway. But of course, my all time favorite movie
Speaker 2: is Aspect Extreme, which is a ski film from the
Speaker 2: mid nineties.
Speaker 1: Sorr's about one hundred guys maybe to make until spring. Okay,
Speaker 1: so ask An Extreme from nineteen ninety three features cool
Speaker 1: dudes with borderline mullets, and as fate would have it,
Speaker 1: it too scored a twenty two percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Speaker 2: It's just more formative for me when I saw it
Speaker 2: because I was younger, and.
Speaker 1: It's inspiring and inspiring.
Speaker 3: Perhaps, Yeah, yeah, so I don't have you know, those
Speaker 3: are the two.
Speaker 2: They just just off the top of my I mean,
Speaker 2: there's been a lot of you know, terrible ski movies that, yeah,
Speaker 2: people love, so I guess that's one of mine.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have questions from listeners. Oh okay, you ready, sure,
Speaker 1: But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of
Speaker 1: the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what they do?
Speaker 1: They help us give money to charity of our ologists' choice,
Speaker 1: which this week is the Eastern Sierra Avalanche Center. Esavalanche
Speaker 1: dot org and it's a nonprofit that provides quality avalanche
Speaker 1: and snowpack information to folks in the eastern Sierra Nevadas
Speaker 1: with a goal of helping them make better decisions while
Speaker 1: traveling in avalanche terrain, so saving lives now. It was
Speaker 1: founded by ned's mentor, Walter Rosenthal, who lost his life
Speaker 1: rescuing others. Walter remains the president in memoriam. So thank
Speaker 1: you patrons and listeners for helping ologies contribute to that cause. Again,
Speaker 1: it's es avalanche dot org. Okay, okay, your questions all right,
Speaker 1: listener questions, let's have them. Here we go. A lot
Speaker 1: of questions. People excited about snow. Oh okay, So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna list these off. Several people Marissa Brewer, May
Speaker 1: Merrill and Juan Pedro Martinez wanted to know what makes
Speaker 1: the snow white.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 2: So the snow is white invisible wavelengths, because that's what
Speaker 2: we see in it's actually wouldn't be and if we
Speaker 2: could see into then you know, near infra red actually
Speaker 2: gets really dark, which is one way you can figure
Speaker 2: out what you're looking at. When you have a satellite
Speaker 2: or a spectrometer something that senses in multiple wavelengths, a
Speaker 2: multi spectral instrument. But it's white just because snow has
Speaker 2: a very low what's called the complex index of refraction,
Speaker 2: so it's very transparent. And what that means actually is
Speaker 2: that it tends to scatter.
Speaker 3: Light that comes into it instead of absorb it.
Speaker 2: Okay, and absorbing is what makes something dark, right, Right,
Speaker 2: the photons are coming in and they bounce around in
Speaker 2: the snowpack and then come back out.
Speaker 3: And that's that's bright when.
Speaker 2: You white because it's an all the wavelengths getting scattered
Speaker 2: back at you.
Speaker 1: Ah, So it doesn't absorb it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's right in the visible wavelengths. Yeah, got it exactly.
Speaker 1: Ah, there we go. A ton of people had avalanche questions, obviously,
Speaker 1: and I will list them all in and aside because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of names. Okay, they are Tony Ben Venuti,
Speaker 1: all Off, Josh Key, Brooke Besone, Barbara Blackie Grace Gonzalez,
Speaker 1: Henry Strong, Wendy Fick, Christopher Enberer, Danny Bockheiser, Greer Nelson,
Speaker 1: Dustin Parish. Also, please remember we're sitting on a bench
Speaker 1: outside an airport, so do enjoy the ambient sounds of
Speaker 1: a few trucks rumbling passed. Also, his layover was almost up.
Speaker 1: Oh and here's that info about airbags that I promised
Speaker 1: you earlier. Jane Ennis essentially asked, what is the best
Speaker 1: way to survive an avalanche other than not being in one?
Speaker 3: So I think the air avalanche airbags have.
Speaker 2: Been a revolution in protective personal protective equipment is what
Speaker 2: they call it, which you know first key patroller used
Speaker 2: to be like CPR, mask and gloves and stuff, and
Speaker 2: now include helmets and avalanche air bags.
Speaker 3: Interesting story about it.
Speaker 2: The guy who invented the the air bag system ABS
Speaker 2: was a German hunter who had been in a couple avalanches.
Speaker 3: One time.
Speaker 2: He had a shamois, which is like a little European
Speaker 2: deer Oh wow, slung around his neck and you've rowed
Speaker 2: to the top of the avalanche and figure out, hey,
Speaker 2: this worked pretty well. And you thought it was a
Speaker 2: surface area thing. That's not quite right. It's an effect
Speaker 2: called inverse segregation. But it's the brazil nut effect. It's
Speaker 2: like shake a can of nuts and basically all the
Speaker 2: little nuts fill in the holes and make the big nut.
Speaker 2: The brazil nuts rise to the top huh.
Speaker 1: And remember how ice floats in a glass. I also
Speaker 1: read that icy snow is less dense than your watery
Speaker 1: human body and so you'll sink in it fast. So
Speaker 1: having a large light air bag, which kind of looks
Speaker 1: like a U shaped pillow you'd use to take a
Speaker 1: nap on an airplane, but like four times as big,
Speaker 1: can float you right up to the top of the slide.
Speaker 1: So if you don't have an air bag, another way
Speaker 1: to survive an avalanche is just to try to move
Speaker 1: to the side of it as quickly as possible and
Speaker 1: to struggle to get your head above the snow wants.
Speaker 1: The movement is slowing down, so you want to get
Speaker 1: your head up Those first fifteen minutes after an avalanche critical. Now.
Speaker 1: Another strategy is to just never go outside ever again. Ever,
Speaker 1: stay warm, watch that seventy show on cable even if
Speaker 1: you don't really like it.
Speaker 2: Or Yeah, airbags so so no, those are those are
Speaker 2: I think the biggest safety improvement that I've seen in
Speaker 2: my lifetime.
Speaker 3: And I ski with an airbag.
Speaker 2: It doesn't add too much weight, you know, it's like
Speaker 2: maybe four pounds extra or so in a pack.
Speaker 1: Did you say he had a deer around his neck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shamoa is that a living deer? Dead one because
Speaker 3: he's a hunter? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Just ski with one of these.
Speaker 3: No, no, okay, he was just bringing it home, you know.
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay? I was like you just you just
Speaker 1: walk around with a live, cute deer on your Okay,
Speaker 1: that makes more sense.
Speaker 2: But they're a little or too I don't know. I
Speaker 2: don't know too much about shamwaya.
Speaker 1: Ps A shemois is a European goat antelope. Sam Wow
Speaker 1: m Maer and Cynthia Barts both had igloo questions. How
Speaker 1: can an igloo keep you warm when it's made of
Speaker 1: tiny frozen water droplets?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So snow is actually a great insulator because it's
Speaker 2: got a lot of air in it. So if you
Speaker 2: think about it, any material that has a lot of
Speaker 2: air and it can kind of work as a good insulator.
Speaker 2: I mean sick of strawb ale or something like that.
Speaker 2: And so that's the idea, right, if you build up
Speaker 2: blocks like that, and also they keep out the wind.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's actually a pretty good insulate. That's why
Speaker 2: snow sticks around for so long.
Speaker 1: Oh, because there's so much air in it.
Speaker 3: It's a good insulator.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. So if there were blocks of
Speaker 1: ice and igluo wouldn't be as warm but the snow
Speaker 1: because there's more air in the snow.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, solid blocks of sea ice would not work as well, okay,
Speaker 2: although they would still provide shelter from the wind, which
Speaker 2: which helps a lot.
Speaker 1: Okay. Also side note, I just learned that igloo in
Speaker 1: some Inuit languages can mean broadly a house or a
Speaker 1: home built out of any material, and that the snow
Speaker 1: house that's typically called an igloo actually has a much
Speaker 1: more specific name. And yes, linguists have studied a bunch
Speaker 1: of Arctic regional languages and yep, there's a ton of
Speaker 1: words for different kinds of snow. The Sami people of
Speaker 1: northern Scandinavia and Russia they got a thousand words just
Speaker 1: for reindeer. How boss is that also part in the
Speaker 1: planes taking off? Did I mention that we recorded this
Speaker 1: on a bench outside of lax I feel like I did. Okay.
Speaker 1: Let's talk eating snow, which was asked by patrons Alisa Norman,
Speaker 1: Jason Steinhoff, and m Mauer. A lot of people had
Speaker 1: questions about eating snow. Kristin Long in particular, asked as
Speaker 1: a child, I was never sure if it was okay
Speaker 1: to eat snow, obviously not the yellow kind, or if
Speaker 1: it really was full of chemicals? Do this smog and
Speaker 1: the atmosphere? So does where you live make a difference
Speaker 1: on whether or not it's okay to eat snow?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does.
Speaker 2: I mean it's all that stuff in the atmosphere and
Speaker 2: the condensation nuclei and all that stuff we're talking about.
Speaker 2: You know, you can definitely have impurities in the snowpack.
Speaker 2: And then we also you also get deposition from dust,
Speaker 2: for instance, on the snow. That's a big issue in
Speaker 2: the Western US, and so that's once it's on the ground.
Speaker 2: But they get these big dust storms in southern Colorado
Speaker 2: and more of these continental areas because you know, we
Speaker 2: just have the ocean and most of the dust, like
Speaker 2: from China, that's not making it over here, but they
Speaker 2: have local sources of dust that they can trace, and
Speaker 2: they get.
Speaker 3: These apocalyptic looking dust storms.
Speaker 2: There's just other stuff, Especially the older and longer that
Speaker 2: the snow has been there, it tends to get stuff
Speaker 2: on top, like like there's an algae that grows on
Speaker 2: the snow, claiming Donnas.
Speaker 1: In the vallis that snow boo?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think is it a it's a funk.
Speaker 2: No, it's an algae I think anyway, make you sick
Speaker 2: if you eat too.
Speaker 3: Much of it.
Speaker 1: Side notes, So I look this up and it's called
Speaker 1: watermelon snow because of this pink blush that the algal
Speaker 1: blooms cost and it even smells like watermelon. But don't
Speaker 1: eat it now of course. Of course, just like snail,
Speaker 1: it's somehow popped up as an ingredient and way too
Speaker 1: expensive face serums because I don't know, maybe a drop
Speaker 1: of snow algae juice will make me look younger, so
Speaker 1: somebody loves me, and I don't die alone with my
Speaker 1: mini Schnauzer left to devour my corpse. I think that's
Speaker 1: the thinking behind it, anyway, So maybe don't now What
Speaker 1: if you are kind of stranded like Jason Steinhoff asked,
Speaker 1: is it true that a stranded human cannot eat snow
Speaker 1: fast enough to stay properly hydrated? And m maur asked,
Speaker 1: is eating snow actually dehydrating because you spend more energy
Speaker 1: melting the snow than you get from drinking the water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're definitely better off melting it if you have
Speaker 2: fire or like a stove. I mean, that's pretty standard
Speaker 2: in most expeditions. You are, you know, getting it to
Speaker 2: go through that phase change. It does require a lot
Speaker 2: of energy, so it's not the most efficient way, but
Speaker 2: you are still getting the water. So yeah, if you're desperate,
Speaker 2: I mean, you can melt somebody. Yeah, it'll make it
Speaker 2: really cold.
Speaker 1: So what if you have nothing to melt snow with? Okay,
Speaker 1: I spent way too long on survivalist message boards, and
Speaker 1: apparently if you have a canteen, you fill it up
Speaker 1: with snow and you tuck it between your layers of
Speaker 1: clothing and you let your body heat melt it such
Speaker 1: your body do it, or you can suck on small
Speaker 1: amounts of snow in a time. I just don't eat ice
Speaker 1: like it's pudding. Also, one thread said you could pee
Speaker 1: in a bucket of snow and just melt it that way,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't be eating yellow snow. I guess technically
Speaker 1: at that point it would be a beverage. What's my point?
Speaker 1: Just bring a canteen or stay inside forever. A lot
Speaker 1: of questions about climate change metal in Heistein wanted to know.
Speaker 1: I live in Boston. Last winter we had a bomb
Speaker 1: cyclone storm that everyone was freaking out about. And she's
Speaker 1: embarrassed to say, I really don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: What is a bomb cyclone? And who gets to make
Speaker 1: up these dramatic names.
Speaker 2: Wait, I don't know. I don't know what a bomb
Speaker 2: cyclone is. Yeah, you got me there. It sounds bad.
Speaker 2: I think you'd want to talk to an atmospheric scientist
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll look it up. It doesn't sound good.
Speaker 1: Though, Okay, my friends, I look this up and a
Speaker 1: bomb cyclone is also known as explosive cyclogenesis, a weather bomb,
Speaker 1: meteorological bomb, explosive development, mid latitude cyclone, cyclone, bomb or
Speaker 1: bomba genesis, or snowmageddon or a nor'easter. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: counting linguists, that is ten English terms for just one
Speaker 1: kind of storm, and it means that the pressure drops
Speaker 1: a bunch at least twenty four millibars in a short
Speaker 1: amount of time twenty four hours. It's when a mass
Speaker 1: of cold air meets warm air and the storm gathers
Speaker 1: intensity really quickly. But an ain't a blizzard unless the
Speaker 1: winds are at least thirty five miles an hour, visibility
Speaker 1: is reduced to a quarter mile or less. And this
Speaker 1: thing lasts at least three hours. And yes, climate change
Speaker 1: affects the amount of warm air that slams into cold
Speaker 1: air slightly. Warmer air can also hold more moisture, So
Speaker 1: we may be seeing shorter snow seasons, but heavier snow
Speaker 1: dumps because of that. So climate change the unnatural earth
Speaker 1: puberty that nobody wants. In terms of fake snow, what
Speaker 1: are your feelings, Jordan Merryfield wants snow. What are your
Speaker 1: feelings on artificial snow made for ski resorts?
Speaker 2: You know, I think they really help these ski resorts.
Speaker 2: The artificial snow helps the ski resorts maintain on more
Speaker 2: consistent product as they'd call it, I mean mammoth. They
Speaker 2: miss their opening day by one day this year for
Speaker 2: the first time since it installed snowmaking, and it's just
Speaker 2: one day since you know, in the early nineties, and
Speaker 2: so they can, you know, on the snow at all.
Speaker 2: They can still have skiing, and they can supplement, and
Speaker 2: in some places it's pretty much all they have, Like
Speaker 2: where I grew up in Winter Green, Virginia, So I
Speaker 2: don't you know, I certainly think it's okay. What one
Speaker 2: thing that's come up with the fake snow is people
Speaker 2: somehow think that water use is all consumptive and it's
Speaker 2: just gone. But the truth is just kind of goes
Speaker 2: right back into the It just runs off, you know,
Speaker 2: in the snow melts and goes, you know, right back
Speaker 2: into the watershed or down into groundwater. Mostly it's the energy,
Speaker 2: I'd say, the consumptive part of it. We uses up
Speaker 2: the most energies. You have to ionize this now so
Speaker 2: big air compressors. It's a lot of electricity to run
Speaker 2: the compressor houses.
Speaker 1: I was curious how these work, and I just watched
Speaker 1: a bunch of videos of huge hoses using compressed air
Speaker 1: or fans to blast tiny water droplets high up in
Speaker 1: the sky so that they freeze and then flutter down
Speaker 1: into powder. And apparently this can be an overnight job,
Speaker 1: kind of like the snow fairy comes at night in
Speaker 1: a beanie and a north face parka and unleashes its
Speaker 1: giant hose arm octopus creature to cover the mountain and
Speaker 1: frozen confetti while you sleep. Cute Caroline Lewis and Asrael
Speaker 1: King both want to know there are there any ways
Speaker 1: to better clear snow off your car, walkway, et cetera,
Speaker 1: aside from scraping and shoveling. As a snow expert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have any good answers. I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't like to use the salt because pets can and
Speaker 2: it sort of marks things. And I kind of enjoy
Speaker 2: it that. You know, It's like a good way to
Speaker 2: get some exercise when you're just stuck inside.
Speaker 1: Right, it's CrossFit. Yeah, CrossFit, You got to watch your
Speaker 1: That's okay.
Speaker 3: I think the main there's there is Uh.
Speaker 2: They even teach in avalanche classes I think called strategic shoveling,
Speaker 2: which is more about how to most quickly extract people.
Speaker 2: Has to do with like tiered levels and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: You don't just want to dig straight into the ground.
Speaker 2: But just like any any working at your desk, there are.
Speaker 3: Correct ways to sit.
Speaker 2: It's correct ways to shovel, correct ways to hold your
Speaker 2: so you don't damage your back.
Speaker 1: Well shoveling, so when you're digging someone out of an avalanche,
Speaker 1: it's almost like terraced.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This is something that Bruce Edgerly came up with, which
Speaker 2: is great. The strategic shoveling for one thing, if they're
Speaker 2: on a steep slope, you want to shovel in towards them,
Speaker 2: not straight down at them, because it's the fastest way
Speaker 2: to shovel out to excavate. And then also if usually
Speaker 2: it depends on what kind of setting you're in, but
Speaker 2: especially if you're at like a ski resort where a
Speaker 2: lot of people, you have more than chances are you
Speaker 2: can only have like one or two people up front
Speaker 2: doing fast shoveling. Then there's going to be other people
Speaker 2: who maybe aren't doing anything. So if they can get
Speaker 2: behind them on like a terrace, you know, if you
Speaker 2: can imagine like steps going down and shovel out that
Speaker 2: debris from the first group, Oh right, you can. That's
Speaker 2: kind of efficient with a dig.
Speaker 1: Also, if your car is snowed in, I did see
Speaker 1: some tips like using a lighter to heat your key
Speaker 1: if your lock is frozen, or putting on a pre
Speaker 1: snow car cover so you can just remove that sucker
Speaker 1: do a little less scrape. Another option is just to
Speaker 1: never go outside again. Now. Main advice lift with your
Speaker 1: legs and not your back. And if you're my dad,
Speaker 1: please wait until I can come up and help you.
Speaker 1: Please thank you, sir. Also, a lot of you had
Speaker 1: a similar question, and I'm just going to say your
Speaker 1: name's with my mouth now. Spencer Gillespie, Billy Marino, Carla
Speaker 1: Hick and Luober, Lauren Harder, Sarah Clark, Barbara Blackie, and Eva.
Speaker 1: A lot of people had questions about climate change. Are
Speaker 1: you seeing your work change a lot in the last
Speaker 1: ten years?
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the last ten years. You know, that's a
Speaker 2: particularly interesting period of time. There's strong evidence that from
Speaker 2: snow radars. For instance, Ben Hatchett is doing some great work,
Speaker 2: but he's at the Desert Research Institute in you and
Speaker 2: r They've got these snow radars that they can look
Speaker 2: at the snow levels and they've had a huge increase,
Speaker 2: statistically significant over the last ten years. And you know,
Speaker 2: one problem is these snow radars haven't been around that long,
Speaker 2: so it's hard to place that history, you know, in contact.
Speaker 2: It could be that this is just a warm ten
Speaker 2: year episode that might not all be due to climate
Speaker 2: chain or partly due to you know, it's unclear, but anyway,
Speaker 2: what that has meant. Even at Mammoth, which has a
Speaker 2: pretty high elevation, you know, the base is nine thousand
Speaker 2: feet of Main Lodge. There's tons of mid winter rain
Speaker 2: now even up higher up on the mountain, oh wow,
Speaker 2: which just never happened. And they've had some interesting wet
Speaker 2: snow avalanche. You get different kinds of avalanches when the
Speaker 2: snow's wet like that and it's raining on it and
Speaker 2: stuff that a lot of the patrollers have never seen before.
Speaker 2: It's so yeah, it's definitely warmer. The climate protections are
Speaker 2: pretty dismal over the next fifty especially one hundred years,
Speaker 2: it's the time to definitely think about for California, especially
Speaker 2: think about the way that we depend on snow melt
Speaker 2: to give us the stream flow that we need throughout
Speaker 2: the summer. It'll basically mean, you know that the snow
Speaker 2: starts smelting earlier, it'll coincide with more snow melt during
Speaker 2: the wet season. Oh it, so more rain on snow events, flooding, yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of things, and just less water throughout the summer.
Speaker 2: You know, we've already seen that. You know, forest fires
Speaker 2: and you know, thats a big soil moisture right is
Speaker 2: very important to whether or not.
Speaker 3: Forest fires occur. And that's it direct.
Speaker 2: You know, if you have snow sitting on top of
Speaker 2: that soil for longer and it melts later there's more moisture.
Speaker 2: So we know that the dwindling snowpacks have a lot
Speaker 2: of far reaching effects.
Speaker 1: Right, So snow hydrology work is not just about skiing
Speaker 1: and avalanches. We need data that folks like net are
Speaker 1: collecting and crunching to figure out how much water we
Speaker 1: can expect the rest of the year. Another very one,
Speaker 1: more scientific question, Gillian Leech wants to know what scientifically
Speaker 1: is the best kind of snow for snowballs.
Speaker 3: The warm and dense kuy and okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, zero hesitation there.
Speaker 2: Yes, Colorado tends to get the lightest snow sort of
Speaker 2: at least in the mountain regions in the US that
Speaker 2: need the upper Peninsula of Michigan and some of the
Speaker 2: Lake Effect areas, but not so much in this air
Speaker 2: or the Cascades or some of these maritime areas.
Speaker 3: A dense like heavy.
Speaker 2: Snow is what you you want because it'll pack better
Speaker 2: into a snowball as it gets closer to freezing.
Speaker 3: It's easier to make snowballs with Do.
Speaker 1: Snow hydrologists ever have snowball fights?
Speaker 3: No, have them with my kids.
Speaker 1: But you don't get being in the face by a colleague.
Speaker 3: No, you're like, Mark, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I think that's just a you know,
Speaker 2: it's you sort of get used to everything right, and
Speaker 2: just get used to being around a lot of snow.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Two last questions. What's the worst thing
Speaker 1: about your job.
Speaker 2: Or the worst thing is I don't I don't get
Speaker 2: outside as much as I would like to, or you know,
Speaker 2: not in the snow as much as I want to,
Speaker 2: because to be because you.
Speaker 3: Know, scientific research science, it can be really tough.
Speaker 2: You know, like writing and being in front of a
Speaker 2: computer is not always the easiest thing to do. I
Speaker 2: think anyone who is being honest would say that, you know,
Speaker 2: it can be very rewarding in a lot of other ways.
Speaker 2: I would like to be sort of in the snow
Speaker 2: more so to speak.
Speaker 1: Do you get to ski a lot when you're up
Speaker 1: there in Mammoth?
Speaker 2: I do, Yeah, I do. Yeah, I get out quite
Speaker 2: a bit. I do cross country skiing, skate skiing. I
Speaker 2: do a lot of back country skiing. Yeah, it depends
Speaker 2: on the year. This year looks like a good one
Speaker 2: so far.
Speaker 1: What is your favorite thing about snow or about your job.
Speaker 2: My favorite thing about my snow or my job, I
Speaker 2: mean two sort of different questions, I guess. But for me,
Speaker 2: it's that I get to work on something that I love.
Speaker 2: But I love, you know, I love being out there
Speaker 2: and the physical parts of working with snow and on
Speaker 2: the snow and the places that I've been to do that.
Speaker 2: It also intellectually is just a really interesting material, and
Speaker 2: it's like one of the brightest substances on Earth. If
Speaker 2: that exists near its smelting temperature, it is extremely weak
Speaker 2: compared to any other material, you know. I think those
Speaker 2: are some of the reasons why people find snow just
Speaker 2: fascinating in the first place. As you peel that onion,
Speaker 2: it's just seems to have more and more layers and
Speaker 2: interesting things about it.
Speaker 1: I wonder why does it smell? Why does snow have
Speaker 1: a smell?
Speaker 3: A smell?
Speaker 1: Yeah, shouldn't Okay, Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sometimes, I mean it's like when it's really quiet, Uh,
Speaker 2: it sounds like it's quiet when it's a snow starts
Speaker 2: out to you because the snow's acting like a baffle,
Speaker 2: like a sound baffle, and so maybe the same thing's
Speaker 2: going on. And with smells, I mean they're not really
Speaker 2: so whatever, you know, if you're long under or smells
Speaker 2: terrible or whatever, it's just kind of coming back at
Speaker 2: you when it's snowing and it's not really.
Speaker 1: That's funny though, that's pat question. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for doing this and for meeting me essentially in a
Speaker 1: parking lot in Lax.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Problem, it's weird.
Speaker 1: Probably one of the weirdest part of your juts. Okay,
Speaker 1: so email a stranger, find a bench and asks more
Speaker 1: people stupid questions because they have such good stories and
Speaker 1: you'll never see snow the same. Now. Ned is not
Speaker 1: on social media, but Ologies is. It's at ologies on
Speaker 1: Instagram and Twitter. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both.
Speaker 1: There are more links up at aliward dot com slash
Speaker 1: ologies and to support via Patreon and submit ologists questions
Speaker 1: before I record and to see some behind the scenes
Speaker 1: videos of my closet where I'm currently recording this. You
Speaker 1: can head too Patreon dot com slash Ologies. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis for managing ologiesmerch dot com,
Speaker 1: where you can get pins and hats and toads and shirts.
Speaker 1: Thanks Aaron Talbert and Hannah Liippo for admitting the Facebook
Speaker 1: Ologies group. Thank you to the vulvasaurus on Twitter for
Speaker 1: gently letting me know when talking about the benefits of
Speaker 1: having episode transcripts, deaf and hard of hearing is preferred
Speaker 1: over the term hearing impaired, which many folks consider offensive.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry I had no idea. Thank you for
Speaker 1: upgrading my brain with that info. Extra editing help this
Speaker 1: week was done by Jared Sleeper of the mental health
Speaker 1: podcast My Good Bad Brain. Also his Instagram stories while
Speaker 1: shopping at Ross are my favorite jareded Underscore Sleeper on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Main editing was done Biologies Top brazil Nut, Stephen Ray
Speaker 1: Morris of the podcasts The per Cast and See Jurassic
Speaker 1: Right those are about cats and dinos. Thank you, Steven,
Speaker 1: You're the best. Once again. A donation was made this
Speaker 1: week to Esavalanche dot org in memory of Walter Rosenthal. Now,
Speaker 1: if you listen to the end of the episodes, you
Speaker 1: know I tell you a secret, And this week my
Speaker 1: secret is I had a dream that I bought like
Speaker 1: a Costco size box at Frosted Flakes, and I was
Speaker 1: so pissed to wake up and realize it wasn't real,
Speaker 1: and I was so horny for cereal. I crumbled up
Speaker 1: a bunch of rice cakes and then I poured vanilla
Speaker 1: coffee creamer over them, and I was like, this is
Speaker 1: pretty tight. And then I had another bowl, and by
Speaker 1: bowl I mean mug. This all happened in a mug. Anyway,
Speaker 1: live your life, cut your own hair, Pick an obscure
Speaker 1: color like umber over million, and then type it into
Speaker 1: Google image search. You deserve it. I love you, Okay,
Speaker 1: bye bye, Stay warm. Pacodermatology, mombiology or doo zoology. Lithology
Speaker 1: is technology, meteorology, mettology, ethnology, zeriology, sethnology