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Friday, December 20, 2013

Snowbow

When we stepped outside the Oak Bay Marina Restaurant earlier this week there was a fine light mist falling. By the time I reached my vehicle this had become a fall of tiny little snowballs about the size of BB gun pellets. Then, while I stood to take this photo of the "snowbow" over the entrance to Oak Bay, the small pellets changed to pea-sized ice balls. Twenty minutes later that particular cloud had blown past and the sky was once again blue. In the photo above you can see the "snowbow" on the right side of the photo and if you look closely (or click the photo to enlarge it) you can see some of the small white snowballs that were falling.

4 comments:

JoJo said...

That's so cool! BTW, when snow is in that form it's called graupel.

Benjamin Madison said...

@JoJo - thanks for that new word - Wikipedia has an interesting article on "graupel". I've got a new word coming up in tomorrow's post - "leucistic".

William Kendall said...

Beautiful shot, Benjamin... it's very dramatic.

Massimo said...

very nice view ! well done and Merry Christmas !