Monday, January 10, 2011

Snow in East Tennessee!

We awoke to 3" of pretty, fluffy snow this morning! As soon as it got light enough I went out on the carport to take some snowflake photos. There were som HUGE dendrites (~5mm) but I noticed they looked thick and white. When I zoomed in on them with my macro lens I could see why. They had tiny balls of ice (frozen cloud droplets) encrusted on them. Notice how this snowflake (left) has 2 "arms" that are white, those are the ice balls. The snowflake on the right has even more of the rime ice, they look like microscopic peas.



The big thrill of the morning though was catching and photographing the double snowflake! It has 12 points. I just wish it had not had all the little ice balls on it! Picky, picky!


It was a good day to photograph the birds too. I got a kick out of this angry-looking little Song Sparrow sitting on the patio railing up to his chest in snow. I couldn't resist adding this caption! :) Other birds included this White-throated Sparrow I shot through the patio railing.