The Gentle Winter

FTLComm - Tisdale - January 15, 2001

It often seems that when we want to start a conversation it is nice to have some common uncontroversial ground to begin with and so it is that most conversations begin with some chit chat about the weather. So let us begin this morning's chit chat. This morning we are getting very gentle fluffy snow that is tumbling out of the ceiling which is only a few hundred feet above. With -13º C this is producing limited visibility and with that low ceiling we are definitely IFR here today.

The picture at the top of the page is of Tisdale from just over a mile to the North and as you can see the frost and snow seem to obscure the little community in the distance. The crust of hoar frost and snow crystals coats everything as you can see at the Shell bulk station South of Town. It is interesting to note that there was a mini gas war on in Melfort yesterday and may even have continued on into today. The price of gasoline fell to below 54¢ while it still remains 72.9¢ here in Tisdale and 70.9¢

in Prince Albert. For several days there has been little or no wind what ever which prompted me to refer to this as the "gentle winter" but the result of this calm condition has been that the hoar frost remains on the trees and just about everything else giving everything a super clean and almost magical appearance. The town's maintenance yard above and these two trees are examples of this frosty adornment. Did you happen to see the pictures of that town in El Salvador where the mountain side just slide through the residential area perhaps killing more than a thousand people on Saturday night? The condition that allows this to happen is truly a remarkable one and has only been analysed in the last few years. Apparently a landslide will build a sort of plasma air buffer beneath it

as it rumbles forward and this allows it to travel often three to five times its lateral distance over its vertical distance. The pictures of that slide indicate that the modest mountain/hillside has moved almost the whole width of the community overwhelming the homes and streets.

Fortunately, Saskatchewan and all of the great central plains rest on a single mantle of the earth's crust and there are no faults from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi valley making it impossible for an earth quake in this huge central portion of the continent. The hoar frost and snow combination is really remarkable as you can

see in this set of poplar trees at a farm driveway just North of town. Then along the highway the light bush is aptly decorated in the fashion of the season. The picture on the right is Main street looking South. It was fairly busy this morning around town with a lot of traffic downtown and what seemed like a lot of business. The normal hustle and bustle of trucks combined with regular traffic from commerce make this a normal Monday morning. This is a good time to pass on greetings to Mr. McElwain from Ireland who asked to see more pictures of Tisdale as he is thinking of coming to rural Saskatchewan.