Flooding, Winter Storms, Wind, Snow, Blinding Sun...

Well, just last week the Grand Forks area was in the upper 40s and thawing out from all the snow and ice. We could see all the grass and all but the largest snow piles had melted. Now here is the first time in many years that UND has closed its doors for the entire day due to weather. There was nearly 4 inches last night and more on the way. The drifting was incredible. It took nearly 2 hours, 3 adults, 1 wheel barrow, 1 snow blower, and assorted snow shovels to dig out the driveway.
Fargo to our south and upstream is sandbagging like crazy in anticipation of a near-record flood water height. In Grand Forks, they have closed two of the three bridges and installed all the stop logs in the flood wall through the city. The ice pack is insane and no one knows if we will flood or not.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care. Theodore Roosevelt

Spring is coming...Maybe

More sun than Mississippi?

We had a great day today. The temperature was +17 F and winds were calm. The sun on the new snow is intense and when we got home this evening around 7pm, I noticed the sun was bright and still fairly high above the horizon.

I started to wonder if Oxford still had sun. Surely, the south has more sun this time of year. But the fact is the spring equinox is almost here and northern latitude get a whole lot of sun. The sun sat in northern Mississippi today at 7:11 pm, while in North Dakota it went down at 7:43 pm. Yeah, a half hour of sun! And there is still twilight to account for. In Mississippi, twilight ended tonight at 7:36 while NoDak ended at 8:14. So you get an extra 45 minutes before dark.

Ok, some might already be thinking that there has to be a simple explanation. How can northern latitudes get more sun in the winter. Well in the morning, Mississippi sun rise is 7:00 today and NoDak was at 7:29. So both places have about 12 hours and 11 minutes of sun. It is just that NoDak has more in the evening where is counts.

But what about the Solstice in June?
NoDak recieves about 1 hour and 35 minutes more sun in the June than does Mississippi. Also, don't forget about twilight. NoDak has longer twilights natural sunlight can be seen from 4:48 am to 10:12 pm in June. Here is a table for comparison:

Summer Solstice (June 21)
	Twilight Begin	Sunrise	Sunset	Twilight End
Grand Forks, ND	4:48am	5:29am	9:31pm	10:12pm
Oxford, MS	5:17am	5:46am	8:14pm	8:43pm

The First Blizzard of 2009

Well, here we are in March 2009 and Grand Forks is getting its first blizzard of the year. They announced yesterday that school would be cancelled today. UND shut down at 3:30 this afternoon and that give me to work on things at the office.

The wind is incredible this time around. It is continually howling outside and creating 1-2 feet tall drifts in the most inconvenient places. I have been lucky to get the family from door to car and back to door again in short distances. Also, I have become adept at locating the “just-right” location and car orientation so I can get back into the car when I return. The drifting snow has kept us from opening the garage door and created a driving hazard.

On my way back home, the winds strength increased and I was unable to see more than about a half-a-block in front of me. For the most part, I have been sheltered from the wind and I wanted experience the full force of a sustained 40 MPH wind with a -35 F wind chill factor. Here is the video: