On Glaciers15 февраля 2012

It’s appropriate that as I’m writing about glaciers and snow and looking out the window of our apartment - it’s snowing right now. The forecast is calling for snow until the weekend.


Intellectually I understand how glaciers are formed. I’ve even hiked up glaciers in Alaska, Montana and Canada. Now that I’ve been living through my first winter here in Mockva I’m experiencing glacier formation first hand, albeit until Spring arrives.


The concept is pretty simple: Snow falls and starts to pile up. Since the temperatures where glaciers are formed never rises about freezing the pressure from the snow eventually creates an ever-larger, growing snow pack. Over 100’s and 1000’s of years glaciers are formed.


Before we moved here I envisioned Mockva would be snow-covered all Winter, and it is, but it’s not quite the way I was expecting things to happen. I was imagining enormous show storms on a daily basis, the kind you’d see in the movie Dr. Zhivago. Now, it does snow here almost every day but usually in small amounts of 1-3 inches. Where I’m from in the US (northern New Jersey) you’d think “No big deal – in a few days the temperature will get above freezing and there would be a substantial melting and whatever had accumulated would be essentially gone.” Obviously the key concept is temperatures rising above freezing.


We haven’t experienced temperatures above freezing since late December. For the past week we’ve been in constant minus territory. The average temperature has been in the minus teens Celsius. To date the lowest the temperature as been is around -26⁰ C – that’s about -13⁰ F. A warm day has been 0⁰


So, even when it snow just a few inches, like it’s doing right now, it never melts. Snow gets shoveled and plowed into ever-growing piles that at this point are huge. We have piles pushed to the side of our apartment compound’s parking lot that are taller than I am. There are similar piles all over Mockva – Who would have thought given an average snow-fall of 1 to 2 inches each time it snows?

To see how much snow we’re experiencing check out the slide show entitled: “kolomenskya_park_jan_2012_v2.exe” on my site: Andrew McDonough Photography


So I’m experiencing glacier formation up front and personal right outside our apartment door. Temperatures are not expected to seriously moderate until early March so I’m thinking the piles, our emerging mini-glaciers, should be getting twice their current size - at least!


Of course temperatures will eventually rise consistently above the freezing point and our glaciers will melt and finally disappear unlike those of the Arctic and Antarctic. It’s hard to imagine it but in August when we arrived everyone was complaining about how hot and humid it was. I guess everyone naturally complains about the weather…too high…too low…never satisfied…


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