Snowcrete

That's the half-joking name for the masses of snow that have lingered for the two and half weeks since the big storm. It's been so cold—zero degrees Fahrenheit Saturday night—that the little bit of snow that that has managed to melt has quickly been refrozen into something you'd need a jackhammer to remove. If, say, you wanted to drive one of these cars on East 89th Street anytime before April.

I took the picture of the car on the right last night, and realized that I'd already taken a picture of it, a week ago. You'd have to look very closely at the two pictures to notice any difference in the amount of snow.

Urban poetry

This is something you see a lot in New York's older neighborhoods—below street level commercial spaces. This one on West 44th Street is vacant at the moment, except for the snow.

Welcome to the working week

Today was the first time since the big snowstorm that I woke up to temperatures in double digits (higher than -12 degrees for the Celciosi). It was a toasty 11 degrees, and it's supposed to get up just to the freezing mark later this afternoon.

It's been so cold that none of the snow from last week has melted; although the sidewalks are mostly clear and there are passages cut through the snow at intersections, there are piles of dirty snow lining every street. It's been so many years since this has been normal that I think we're all a little shellshocked.

Astronomy Tuesday

This recent image of Jupiter taken by the Juno spacecraft has had the color and texture enhanced to show off the cloud patterns, making the familiar planet look like a polished globe of some rare and priceless mineral.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Processing and License: Thomas Thomopoulos

Sunday bird blogging

We're in the middle of the latest Snowmageddon (though our part of it seems to be more sleet than snow now—I'm not going to go out to investigate) so a penguin seems appropriate. This gentoo was dancing around the whale bones at Mikkelsen Harbor.

Saturday reflections

Windows on the Upper East Side, down the street from those snowy lions.

Abstract

We haven't had much snow yet this winter, but this bus window still needs a good cleaning. With the sun shining on the glass, First Avenue was just a gritty abstract.

Snow in the city

Pictures from a few years ago, just to help get me in the mood. Actually I would rather have snow than the strong winds and bitter cold we've had way too much of this winter.

The other kind of ICE

There's a big winter storm headed our way this weekend and, assuming it doesn't change course, we are supposed to get at least a foot of snow on Sunday. I'm old enough to remember when that happened multiple times every winter, and also old enough to be grateful that I don't have to be anywhere until Tuesday. (The ice in the picture was in Cierva Cove, last January.)

Astronomy Tuesday

“Today the key features of the Copenhagen interpretation can be more easily explained, and understood, in terms of what happens when a scientist makes an experimental observation. First, we have to accept that the very act of observing a thing changes it, and that we, the observers, are in a very real sense part of the experiment—there is no clockwork that ticks away regardless of whether we look at it or not. Secondly, all we know about are the results of experiments. We can look at an atom and see an electron in energy state A, then look again and see an electron in energy state B. We guess that the electron jumped from A to B, perhaps because we looked at it. In fact, we cannot even say for sure that this is the same electron, and we cannot make any statement about what it was doing when we were not looking at it.”

—John Gribbin, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat

I'm going to be studying cosmology at Oxford this summer, assuming my knee cooperates, and in preparation I've been re-reading some of my old books on astronomy and physics before tackling the class reading. Of course quantum physics describes things on the atomic and subatomic level, while much of astronomy looks at things that are incomprehensibly enormous—the Medulla nebula, for example, a supernova remnant in Cassiopeia, which is still expelling radio waves and gases 10,000 years after it blew up.

Image Credit: Pierre Konzelmann

Snowy day

Yesterday was the first day of intake testing for spring classes. The forecast on my phone said rain, possibly some sleet, so I wore sneakers that were completely inadequate for the slushy sidewalks left by hours of light but sloppy snow.

One picture is from the bus on Fifth Avenue looking into a Central Park that was blurred by focus-grabbing droplets on the window. The photo isn't black and white but might as well have been, as you can judge by subtracting the taxi and streetlight colors from the other photo, taken on the other side of the park after I got off the bus.

I managed to get home without breaking any bones, which is the important thing.

Urban poetry

When you just need a break from doomscrolling.