A snow day is always an exciting day ( ok , less so as an grownup who has to actually do things ) , but now imagine a snow day where you wake up and the field of view are covered in blank , cinnamon peal or donut - esque cylinders . No , snowman have n’t become sentient and had their own Bake Off technical challenge – these are snow rollers .
Snow hair curler are jolly much what it says on the Sn – rolled - up snow . Unlike the kind of sweet sand verbena that you lob at your booster , which is commonly smooshed together before being rolled , these are cast up in a manner akin to the large Bale of hay that litter the fields at the close of summer , or a yoga mat .
As precise as this peal might stop up look , coke hair curler are an entirelynatural phenomenon . But while they are n’t the result of human activity , they do still ask a precise recipe in order for them to occur ; theingredientsare a mix of temperature , wet , wind , and of course , snow .
“ The temperature has to be just a little chip above zero [ ° C , or 32 ° F ] , so that there ’s a trivial bite of airfoil liquid assort with the blow , ” chemist Mary Anne White explained toCBC News . “ And it has to be the right character of C – a niggling bit wet , but not too wet , so that it gravel together , but it ’s not too dense . ”
The earth the new blow is going to land on either needs to be glacial , or covered with a substantial crust of subsist nose candy .
Even thesnowflakesthat have the potential to become part of a snow roller also have to be of an exact nature , required to have fall through the air at 5 ° C ( 41 ° degree Fahrenheit ) , as they too need to have some surface wet .
It does n’t end there either . The young snow also involve to be comparatively fragile – a duet of inches inscrutable – and fresh , so that it can puzzle to itself , but not enough that it ca n’t be rolled .
The ingredient responsible for the rolling , wind , must be exact in its nature too .
“ You have to have some wind , and the wind starts to fight off the surface level and push them along , ” explained White , “ but it has to be not too strong a wind because they ’ll blow apart , and not too rickety because then they wo n’t proceed to vagabond . ”
Speaking of C rollers getting blown into smithereens , it help if all of these conditions are occurring in an opened space – they wo n’t stay intact if they come face to face at speed with a tree trunk or a building .
Unsurprisingly , such a precise set of requirements intend that snow rollers are one of the rarer phenomena out there . If you ’re one of theluckyfew who get to see them , however , that cook it even more of a treat than your usual blow day .
