Happy Winter! Outside our windows here in Danbury, snow falls thick and fast today, and is piling up nicely in the parking lot. Estimates of accumulation are jumping from 1-3 inches to 3-5 inches to 5-9 inches. Who knows.

According to Wikipedia, the highest seasonal total snowfall in the United States was in the 1998-1999 winter season at the Mount Baker Ski Area near Bellingham, WA. A total of 1,140 inches (29 meters) of snow fell there that winter! That’s 95 feet of snow! That’s about 1 foot of snow a day, every day, for 3 months straight! Yikes!!

If you’re watching some of the white flaky stuff fall past your windows today, take a moment to find out about these tiny little fairy flakes. Caltech has a website dedicated to snowflakes and snow crystals; what they are, where they come from and how they’re created. Pretty cool!

And the National Snow and Ice Data Center (nsidc.org) has a page on, “All About Snow.”