Smoke on the water winter haven
"Chinook winds are westerlies from the Pacific whose moisture gets wrung out as it passes over the Rocky Mountains. But in the western U.S., there's a wind called the Chinook, or "snow eater," that vaporizes snow before it even has a chance to melt." The most common way, of course, is by melting-which gives everyone the pleasure of trudging through slush, mud, and water.
"There's more than one way for Mother Nature to get rid of a fresh blanket of snow.
Low temperatures, strong winds, intense sunlight, very low air pressure - just the recipe for sublimation to occur.ĭave Thurlow of the Mount Washington Observatory offers a good explanation of sublimation in The Weather Notebook: If I was to pick one place on Earth where sublimation happens a lot, I might choose the south face of Mt. Energy, such as strong sunlight, is also needed. Sublimation also occurs more at higher altitudes, where the air pressure is less than at lower altitudes. Sublimation occurs more readily when certain weather conditions are present, such as low relative humidity and dry winds. The fog you see is actually a mixture of cold carbon dioxide gas and cold, humid air, created as the dry ice "melts". "Dry ice" is actually solid, frozen carbon dioxide, which happens to sublimate, or turn to gas, at a chilly -78.5 ☌ (-109.3☏). If you don't know what I mean, then look at this picture of dry ice. Actually, the best way to visualize sublimation is to not use water at all, but to use carbon dioxide instead. Eventually the ice in the shirt will disappear. One way to see the results of sublimation is to hang a wet shirt outside on a below-freezing day. It is not easy to actually see sublimation occurring, at least not with ice. The opposite of sublimation is "deposition", where water vapor changes directly into ice-such a snowflakes and frost. For those of us interested in the water cycle, sublimation is most often used to describe the process of snow and ice changing into water vapor in the air without first melting into water.
Sublimation is the conversion between the solid and the gaseous phases of matter, with no intermediate liquid stage.
#SMOKE ON THE WATER WINTER HAVEN LICENSE#
Visit Media to see details.Ī container holding dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) sublimating into the air.Ĭredit: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons License Sources/Usage: Some content may have restrictions.