Volume 9 , Issue 4

Oklahoma's Snow Rollers of 2007

Snow Rollers -- Rod sent us some 2007 images that appeared on the TV-9/Daily Oklahoman website this week.

We did a Google search for "Snow Rolls" and were taken back to 1906 and the "Snow Rollers" that appeared in Jericho, Vermont and Michigan.

According to the July, 1906 Monthly Review, by Mr. Wilson A. Bentley, dated Jericho, VT, June 26 and July 5, 1906 -- Snow Rollers formed during the night of January 18, 1906 in the vicinity of Jericho, Vermont.

It was considered back then a rare phenomenon of the formation by wind action of vast numbers of snowballs, or snow rolls or rollers. The weather conditions that prevailed before and while they were being formed ... about five inches of very light, fluffy snow fell during the 24 hours immediately preceding the phenomenon. The temperature ranged from 14 degrees to 22 degrees F. During the night of the 18th, the temperature slowly rose from 24 degrees to 34 degrees and the lower wind shifted from westerly to southerly points and blew at times in a very strong but intermittent and peculiar gust-like manner. The snow rolls were formed during the latter part of the night, after the rise to 34 degrees was accomplished. This rise in temperature operated to cause a light superficial melting of the upper layers of the snow and to make it slightly damp. so that the individual snow crystals tended to sling to one another.

The phenomenon occurred only over a limited and narrow strip of foothill country about one mile wide, lying alongside and parallel to, but at a little distance from, the western side of the Green Mountains. The gusts of wind evidently had a strong descending motion, for they actually scooped up considerable masses of the light, damp, fluffy snow and formed it into ridges or hollow snow arches, and rolled many of these up into snow rolls of various sizes. --   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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