In principle it can snow at any temperature below freezing. It snows at the South Pole even though the temperature is rarely above -40 C (-40 F). In more hospitable climates, however, it doesn't snow so much when the temperature is below around -20 C (-4 F). When a parcel of moist air cools, it starts producing snow before it gets that cold. By the time the temperature drops to -20 C, the snow has already fallen and the air is pretty dry.

If snow or ice has covered the barcode decals so that you cannot see it, the reader will not be able to either. In these cases it would be better to use a decal on a card that can be held up to the reader. It is possible to get 2 barcode decals with the same ID number, so that one goes on the vehicle and the other is carried for times when heavy ice and/or snow has covered the vehicle.

was the driest year of the three previous runnings, and there were short snowbanks to cross over most of the major passes, with a substantial amount (thigh deep) below Virginus Pass. In '95 almost the entire course was under snow, and the run was cancelled because of it. Expect anything in between. We'll post periodic snow reports here, as the season progresses. You can also check them yourself. There are unseasonable bare spots on the peaks above Silverton.

Snow removal was done by High School custodians and Buildings and Grounds employees. It will be improved for the winter of 2006/2007 -- there were a few problems this past winter stemming from miscommunications between the two groups. A snow fighter meeting will be held in late October 2006, between the two groups to make sure assignments are clearly understood.

The wood is unaffected by snow although you may notice some minor cupping of the wood slats just after the snow has melted and the wood surface is still wet. This cupping will disappear once the snow completely melts and the wood surface dries.

No, it might even feel a tad warmer since we are flying with the wind and you won't feel a wind-chill.

A cold is a runny or stuffy nose caused by a virus. Average healthy children average 6 colds per year though it is not unusual to for them to get 2 colds per month during the "sick" months of winter. Nasal drainage may be clear, cloudy, yellow or green. The color of the drainage has no significance in diagnosing a bacterial infection, sinusitis or a need for antibiotics. There is no cure. Treatments are directed at increasing comfort until the viral infection runs it course.

The story of the Southern Pacific passenger train stranded in the snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1952 after an avalanche has been told in newspaper articles and in a book entitled Snowbound Streamliner by Robert J. Church. The train City of San Francisco was stuck in the snow for three days near Yuba Pass while heroic efforts were made to rescue the passengers in which two SPRR employees lost their lives. It was partly engineering and partly political.

The six-fold symmetry of a snow crystal ultimately derives from the hexagonal geometry of the ice crystal lattice. But the lattice has molecular dimensions, so it's not trivial how this nano-scale symmetry is transferred to the structure of a large snow crystal. The way it works is through faceting. No long-range forces are necessary to form facets; they appear simply because of how the molecules hook up locally in the lattice (see Crystal Faceting for how this works).