Drizzle

“ Between twelve and one o'clock, the rain which had been pouring down steadily with true English pertinacity, for two days, was gradually passing into a drizzle still more unpleasant,—a drizzle that soaked into the already soaked clay, that made the mud more slippery, that penetrated a man's clothing and beat softly but irritatingly against his face, and dripped from his hair and hat down upon his neck, however well he might imagine himself protected by his outside wrappings. ”

“ A morning drizzle had been so greedily licked by the scorching pavement, or lost in the sand and grit that, inches deep, covered the roadway, that the plane trees on the Embankment, with a mottling where the rain had splashed their dusty leaves, were the sole evidence of a shower too fleeting to be remembered. ”

“ Large drops are shattered by a stiff wind, and drops a quarter of an inch in diameter are apt to be shattered before reaching the ground. The largest drops occur in connection with thunder-storms. A shower composed of fine drops much diffused is usually termed drizzle. ”

“ The long drizzle had begun. Pedestrians had turned up collars, and trousers at the bottom. Hands were hidden in the pockets of the umbrellaless; umbrellas were up. The street looked like a sea of round black cloth roofs, twisting, bobbing, moving. Trucks and vans were rattling in a noisy line and everywhere men were shielding themselves as best they could. ”

“ The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop.
Above, beneath.
From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top. ”

“ The wind generally blows up the valley during the daytime, when the clouds ascend, to be condensed by the colder night-air. Thus we almost invariably had rain at night, generally in a heavy fall, but occasionally in small drizzle, which usually continued until the forenoon. ”

“ CHAPTER
16 In the morning it was raining. A fog had come over the mountains from the sea. You could not see the tops of the mountains. The plateau was dull and gloomy, and the shapes of the trees and the houses were changed. I walked out beyond the town to look at the weather. The bad weather was coming over the mountains from the sea.
The flags in the square hung wet from the white poles and the banners were wet and hung damp against the front of the houses, and in between the steady drizzle the rain came down and drove every one under the arcades and made pools of water in the square, and the streets wet and dark and deserted; ”

“ dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise, 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix.
The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle. ”

“ On both sides, and above us, lay the pure white snow; below us a huge abyss, into which the rocky ridge descended like a darkened stairway to the lower regions. The awful stillness was unbroken, save by the whistling of the wind among the rocks. Dark masses of clouds seemed to bear down upon us every now and then, opening up their trap-doors, and letting down a heavy fall of snow. The heat of our bodies melted the ice beneath us, and our clothes became saturated with ice-water. Although we were surrounded by snow and ice, we were suffering with a burning thirst. ”

“ The long ridge of ice which had been heaped up in the mid-channel had increased to thrice its former height, and the crunching and grinding of the vast masses arose above the roaring of the storm. Far up the river there came a deeper and fuller sound of the same kind, which, brought down by the wind, burst with increasing terrors upon the ear. The ridge of ice was in constant motion, being pressed and heaped up in ever-increasing masses, and, as it heaped itself up, toppling over and falling with a noise like thunder. ”

“ One winter only had passed since the convulsion that disrupted it, and already the snow was beginning to build up its gaps and chasms. All the summer through, for many hours on clear days, the sun will melt those snows and the frost at night will glaze them into ice. The more conformable ice-blocks will gradually be cemented together, while the fierce winds that beat upon the ridge will wear away the supports of the more egregious and unstable blocks, and one by one they will topple into the abyss on this side or on that. ”

“ At the approach of summer, such drifts turn to ice through frequent thawing and freezing, since the surface snow, melting under the glare of the summer sun, seeps down through the mass beneath in daytime, and freezes again at night. From such drifts flow icy streams for the leaping trout. Countless sparkling springs gurgled forth at the foot of the slopes.
Here I had my first lessons in conservation and learned that it is indeed an ill wind that does no good. Here nature hoards her savings in snowbanks. To these savings she adds constantly throughout the winter. ”

“ To run was instantly to freeze one’s face; to lie on the sled was to chill through the body to the very marrow. It was impossible to face it long, and again we put in to shore, made a fire, and boiled some tea.
At mid-day the sun shone, and the thermometer stood at 26° below zero; the sun was utterly powerless to make itself felt in the slightest degree; a drift of dry snow flew before the bitter wind. Was this really great cold? I often asked myself. I had not long to wait for an answer. My two fellow-travellers were perhaps of all men in those regions best able to settle a question of cold. ”

“ It is well known that the rain-drops on the roof are smaller than those that fall on the street. The difference is so great, that on the roof of the royal castle in Berlin, Prussia, there falls four and a half inches less rain during the year than on the square before the building.
Our readers may now imagine, without difficulty, how in a similar way, snow is formed. If a stratum of air saturated with moisture meets a very cold one, the fog begins to freeze, and becomes specks of snow. They, too, increase while falling, and on arriving upon the earth they are large flakes. ”

“ The snow, in many places, had become firmly packed—much of the way sufficiently firm to hold up the dogs and the broad shoe of the sledge, with both Ebierbing and me on it.
"We had other work than travelling to do. We worked desperately to keep our faces and feet from freezing. The wind was blowing a smart breeze all the way up the bay, directly from ahead, at a temperature of 62° below the freezing mark. The air calm, with a temperature of 100° below the freezing point of water, would be much more endurable than with such a wind, charged with the temperature it was. ”

“ The swift stream at the fall appears to strike one side, as it might the side of a water wheel, and so cause it to revolve; but in the angle between this and the fall half an inch distant, is another circle of bubbles, revolving very rapidly in the opposite direction. The laws, perchance, by which the world was made, and according to which the systems revolve, are seen in full operation in a rill of melted snow.
March 16, 1859. p. m. Launch my boat and sail to Ball's Hill. It is fine, clear weather, and a strong northwest wind. What a change since yesterday! ”

“ Any object that broke the wind—a stunted pine, a broken tree-trunk, a Government road-post—had at its leeward side a high, narrow snow-drift tailing off to the dead level of the plain. Where the wind dropped the snow rose at once. ”

“ But in Winter when the cold and windy weather is coming, they fly in great flocks like clouds of huge snow-flakes, and we watch them from the window and wonder how soon the storm will follow them. And the next day or the day after, or sometimes the very day when they come, the air is white again, this time with driving snow. It comes flying past the windows, to be whirled up high by the gale and dropped again till we see the ground speckled with white, and then white everywhere except close round the big tree trunks. ”

“ Here, if snow has fallen, as sometimes happens, while wind is blowing, it is driven into all manner of curving wave crests and undulations; then when the fall is over, the sky clears again, a night of frost hardens and congeals the outlines, and the trees wear fine feathers and{17} plumes of whiteness. As the snowfall packs with its own weight, there grows on the surface of the fields a crust half snow, half ice, covered with dazzling minute crystals. ”

“ Oh, how biting cold it was! On in the grey snow light with a terrible wind sweeping up the long reaches of the river; nothing spoken, for such cold makes men silent, morose, and savage. After four hours travelling, we stopped to dine. It was only 9:30, but we had breakfasted six hours before. We were some time before we could make fire, but at length it was set going, and we piled the dry driftwood fast upon the flames. Then I set up my thermometer again; it registered 39 below zero, 71 degrees of frost. ”

“ Sometimes, when the snow is drifting up the pass, and the world is blank behind, before, and all around, it seems like plunging into chaos. The muffled pines loom fantastically through the drift as we rush past them, and the wind, ever and anon, detaches great masses of snow in clouds from their bent branches. ”

“ That happened every spring. The farther up north you were the later it took place, of course. A few days of sunshine, a milder feel in the wind, and the springs in the hills would begin to trickle into the streams, the streams into the rivers, and up would rise the bursting ice on the swollen water.
Now that was what Nell was dreading most of all. ”

“ We had a fall of snow last night, and it dripped in here so that the bag became wet. This constant snowfall, which will not turn to rain, is enough to make one despair. It generally takes the form of a thick layer of new snow on the top of the old, and this delays the thaw.
“This wind seems to have formed some lanes in the ice again, and there is a little more bird-life. We saw some little auks again yesterday; they came from the south, probably from land. ”

“ The water being cold makes the pitcher cold, and as the warm air of the room strikes it, a moisture like dew is left on the pitcher, in the same manner as dew is left on grass, leaves, and flowers.
In cold weather, when the dew gathers on plants and flowers, it sometimes freezes and forms frost, and when the clouds throw off their moisture in rain drops, the rain becomes sleet, hail, or snow.
So you see that dew, rain, frost, sleet, snow, and hail are only different forms of water.
LESSON XXVI.
treas'ure, a large quantity of money ”

“ Paul warned them. “I’d be the last one to advise going out into the woods with the storm keeping up. But Tolly Tip told me the snow stopped hours ago. What we see whirling around is only swept by the wind, for it’s as dry as powder you know. And even the wind seems to be dying down now, and is blowing in spasms.”
“Paul, you’re right, as you nearly always are,” Jack affirmed, after he had pressed his nose against the cold glass of the little window. ”

“ Already it had begun to freeze; and I, so familiar both with white and black frost, observed with no small interest the grey or fog-frost, which was new to me. How different from the pure whiteness when the stars are sparkling, and the earth is gleaming, and the spirit of man so buoyant! This grey fog-frost is rather depressing to most natures, and a chilly damp creeps to the core of all things. ”

“ Generally when you go out into a blizzard the drift is blown from your face and clothes, and though you cannot see your stretched-out hand, especially on a dark winter day, the wind prevents you being smothered. The wind also prevents the land, tents, hut and cases from being covered. But during this blizzard the drift drove at you in such blankets of snow, that your person was immediately blotted out, your face covered and your eyes plugged up. ”

“ It was a great day for the fells, when a frozen surface crushed elastically underfoot and kept one dryshod anywhere, and they walked in frosty, sun-kissed air, keenly exhilarating yet spicily warm. Snow capped the greater heights and seemed to clarify an atmosphere already clear, but the dales were free of snow and never more fit for walking than now when their boggy surface was dried up and roughened to the tread by crisp, granulated particles of frost. ”

“ Although the thick trees sheltered them to a large extent from the fury of the storm, which had now nearly assumed the proportions of a blizzard, yet the sharp particles of snow stung their faces like needles whenever an open space allowed the wind to reach them with anything like its full force. ”

“ Friday, Feb. 1st, 1861.
My dear Cerjat,
You have read in the papers of our heavy English frost. At Gad's Hill it was so intensely cold, that in our [139] warm dining-room on Christmas Day we could hardly sit at the table. In my study on that morning, long after a great fire of coal and wood had been lighted, the thermometer was I don't know where below freezing. The bath froze, and all the pipes froze, and remained in a stony state for five or six weeks. The water in the bedroom-jugs froze, and blew up the crockery. The snow on the top of the house froze, and was imperfectly removed with axes. ”

“ The open places amid the drift were faintly shimmering, reflecting the feeble light that shone through the clouds from the stars; the drift itself loomed in fantastic shapes of pure black on the water. There were logs and patches of sticks and grass; lumps of straw-stacks; the rectangles and triangles of sides of buildings; barrels and hogs heads; tangles like jackstraws of lumber and trees. It was as if everything that will float had its kind in the masses, around which were straits and ponds and open waterways as smooth as blown glass. ”