Gregory street Normal, Illinois 30 Jan 08 after temp drops 40 degrees in 3 hours
College Avenue 31 Jan 08
ISU Milner Library 31 Jan 08
ISU Milner Library 31 January 08
ISU College Avenue bridge 31 Jan 08
Snow tree 31 Jan 08
Snow, 26 December 2009. Try the magnifying glass at upper-right.
Ice on downspout at Cosi's in Normal, IL
West of ISU BBC 31 jan 08
Snowstorm 31 Jan 08
Strange icicle on Gregory street early Jan 08
Snowy day early jan 08
Winter storm Draco, on 20 Dec 2012. You know, the day before the Mayan Apocalypse that didn't happen. Please note flag is at half-mast because of Newtown, Conn shooting.
Millennium Park on 09 February 2013 from 15th floor of Crane Communications building
Wider view of Millennium Park on 09 February 2013, from 15th floor of Crane Communications building
On the slushy street at night
Normal, Illinois 01feb08. It was actually kind of fun scooping off half the snow from the car for illustration purposes. But by the time all walkway, three cars and the driveway were cleared, the charm had worn off. These few inches of snow added up to some serious tonnage. Wonder how many heart attacks the hospital processed this morning?
Pic by Diane Wiman - snow piles up on porch railing 01feb08
About 6:30 am, snowy morning
view the same spot in Spring: http://picasaweb.google.com/george.wiman/Spring#5464102262500388354 Does anyone else think it's funny I named this picture "winter-07jan09-a.jpg" because I forgot it's actually 2010?
Icicles which form on tree branches often weigh down the branch, with interesting results.
Frost and morning sun
The last vestige of Winter.
Actually, Happy New Year 2011, EVERYBODY!
Eerie lighting conditions on Christmas night, 2010. No special effects. This is full nighttime, folks; but there were low clouds and the ground recycled just about every visible photon that fell on it. New powder snow has about 95% albedo in the visible range. Note blue light from our porch at 4:00 to camera position.
It isn't so much that we got 13 inches of very dense snow, but that this storm covered most of the Mississippi basin at once. So I hope it melts slowly or downstream flooding is a real possibility.
Snowpocalypse 2011, looking towards Main street (normally visible). This is about 2 hours in. Maybe it should be snomageddon or smowmacaust... Anyway it's some kind of snowing out there.
Next picture is just different crop of this one.
Notice the snow blowing horizontally off the left side of the roof.
Looking toward Main street - normally visible in this angle.
It was just impressive to stand and watch. Hard to get a sense of the motion of the thing from a still picture.
Later I'll take an "after" picture of this scene.
A brief break in the storm. But there's a lot of blowing snow; wait! I'll go get a laser so we can see the blowing snow! It'll be cool! Next picture please...
During a break in the storm. Laser is normally invisible in air; strongly visible beam is indication of blowing snow. New snowfall began again in earnest a while later.
A little later, the storm started up again.
UFO lands in my neighbor's back yard. Either that or they turned on the yard lights so their dog would brave the storm and do his business.
Our back porch, in the morning.
Back porch in the morning, detail.
Neighbor's house in the morning.
Our back walk in the morning. Hard to gauge the depth of the snow. Wait! I'll dig halfway and then take another picture!
OK, yeah, that's pretty deep. Also, this was not fluffy snow; it was actually quite dense.
Wow, is that a yardstick? The level part of our driveway didn't appear to be a drift so this would be the depth for North Normal. Next slide, please...
Normal officially got 13 inches but we got a bit more. Repeated measurements confirm this.
Could not open front door.
Neighbor's car gives scale to snow depth.
Mrs. digging out. Took several pictures of her doing this. But I helped, honest.
See that big shoveled area in the foreground? Teamwork. Normally we can't make a sandwich together. As awful a job as it was, we actually had fun.
Used a tarp to slide snow from in-between cars. Filled it repeatedly to 100 lbs or so, slide and dump, joking about how it was a body...
Cool new roofline.
Photo of the current weather in Mountain View, California, thoughtfully submitted by Lucas Wiman. http://goo.gl/mhfp0 Mercury News headline reads; "Bay Area gets sunny skies as much of the country endures winter storm"
See? Having fun.
Diane Wiman, action hero.
Knee deep.
OK, five pictures of Diane smiling. YOU decide which one to leave out of the set; I can't. The next picture will be from campus. We spent the day digging out and I'll be interested to see how the University did the same.
Thursday (2nd day after the storm) was very busy, and I didn't have a chance to take pictures until on the way home. There had been some amazing drifts - this morning I saw huge dump trucks in the Bone Center parking lot, carrying away snow put in them by front-end loaders. But they got away before I could stop, remove mittens, extract camera from backpack and get a picture. In the campus proper, winds created some spots where concrete was almost bare, and some drifts four or five feet high - which the campus maintenance people spent all day yesterday digging out so the University could re-open today. Think on this, anyone who believes public employees are lazy; cafeteria workers came in on a day when the whole state was paralyzed to make sure the students in dorms could eat. Not to mention the maintenance people working outside too.
Performing Arts Center
Looking South from ramp to College Street Bridge
Where winter goes. This is weeks after the snowpocalypse of 2011, yet this parking-lot pile still probably weighs as much as a large SUV.
Melt water falling into a storm drain. Not a bad lesson on perspective; the falling water forms parallel lines but they appear to converge in the photo.
Illinois in January. It's lovely, but I was standing near an overpass in 30mph wind at about 20 degrees f.
Photo by Brenda Tanner of Fairbanks, Alaska 28 January 2012.
The snowflakes were of fairly uniform size; the differential you see here represents the depth between the camera and the house across the street. Like stars in the three-dimensional galaxy, they appear to cluster into patterns, snowy "constellations". Though I guess that would be "conflakations".
