Dear Weather,

I used to think you were fun. As a kid, I loved your annual change of seasons, slowly marking the progress of time. Wintertime brought unexpected days off from school when we were all but forced to go sledding on our local golf course. Hot chocolate awaited us when we returned and we’d thaw out in time for a hot dinner. During summertime, we had to momentarily suspend our neighborhood Whiffle ball games while we waited out your fierce thunderstorms. We would hang out on our front porch, daring one another to run out into the rain.

But now, Weather, now I’m not so sure I like you anymore. Back in the fall, you canceled my conference in Austin. I didn’t take it personally. After all, lots of people were coming to the conference.

But today, today!, is clearly a personal sleight. You see, today was supposed to be the first day of MARC (the MTL Annual Research Conference (acronyms fall within acronyms here at MIT (and parentheses fall within parentheses))). MARC has been my baby for the last few months - I was co-chair. But after a frantic teleconference last night, we decided that your expected 5 to 11 inches of snow falling during the time that three buses were supposed to leave MIT for New Hampshire was going to make travel dangerous. We remember what you did two weeks ago along the same route. Furthermore, I personally had visions of our industry guests flying in from places like California and Arizona and trying to drive in the snow. It just wasn’t worth the risk.

So now, instead of skiing in New Hampshire, today will be spent trying to reschedule the conference for tomorrow at MIT. I brought a coffee tumbler to work today, and I expect to be refilling it frequently. I hear you’re nicer to people in California, Weather. Why is that?

Weather, if I’ve done something to personally offend you, please let me know. Let’s be friends again, ok?

Nicole

PS - I have to ask… is it because I’m using the “Let it Snow” theme on my Google homepage? Hmmm?

You come to grad school thinking that you’re going to study quantum-organic-bio computation and apply it to homeland security.  You’ll become the world’s expert!  So you show up in Boston and start learning quantum-organic-bio computation.

But you also gain other skills along the way. Some that are geographically specific. Since coming to Boston, I’ve perfected the art of walking on icy sidewalks and parallel parking my car on the left-hand side of the street. (The first time I tried to do this, I was so awful. Some very nice man came out of his shop to direct me. I’m forever indebted to him because if he hadn’t come outside to help, I’d STILL be trying to park my car.) I’ve also honed the art of giving good directions around here. This is particularly difficult because none of the streets are labeled, they change names every block, and don’t intersect at right angles. Sometimes you have to specify which left turn to make at an intersection. It’s fun.

I woke up the other day to a weather forecast of sleet and rain. I realized that, despite living almost my entire life in the northeast, I still didn’t know what sleet was. Sure, I knew it was frozen water falling from the sky. But how is it different from ice? Or snow? Or freezing rain? Or hail? There’s such a cornucopia of frozen stuff that falls from the sky around here, I figured I should know.

So I took my independent researchin’ skillz (garnered while studying things as abstruse as quantum-organic-bio computation) and did what any good grad student would do. I went to Wikipedia. And I compiled a list of frozen water that might fall from the sky. Here we go.

 

• Sleet is actually just frozen ice pellets. In countries that speak British English, they just call them “ice pellets” and “sleet” is some sort of mix of rain and snow.
• Freezing rain is precipitation that was snow at a higher altitude. It thawed on its way down and became liquid again. However, the temperature on the ground is below freezing, so the water will freeze upon impact.
• Snow is crystallized water. It’s soft and fluffy and good for throwing at friends.
• Hail are large clumps of ice. They’re usually formed during thunderstorms (in the summer). A small ice pellet will start to fall, but get blown back up again by the storm. A new layer of ice can form on top of the original. The hailstone can keep getting blown upwards, adding more layers of ice. This can lead to hailstones that are as big as golf balls.
• And just for good measure (because this was also mentioned the other day), black ice is ice that’s formed without air bubbles in it. The lack of air bubbles makes the ice look transparent. It’s “black” because it often forms on streets (and causes car accidents).

I’m now adding “knowledge of frozen precipitation” to things like parallel parking on the opposite side of the street and giving directions. They won’t help me get a PhD, but they’re useful by-products.