Will It Snow?

Long-time readers may remember my Three Winter Questions about When It Will Snow: by Halloween? by Thanksgiving? by Christmas? Each year the answers vary. Most years, though, the first answer is no.

Not this year. Bad news for trick-n-treatin’ kids.

We’ve had a bout of cold Canadian air — a consequence of living almost exactly on the 45th parallel, more-or-less in the middle of the landmass, and far from any major mountains. It’s wonderfully sunny today, only partly cloudy, but the air temp is 33°. (Need I add “Fahrenheit”? It’s such a pain to spell.)

Not that I had to — the overnight snowfall was pretty light — but just to get my behind outside and winter acclimating, I went out and shoveled (if you can dignify it with that name compared to what I’ll be shoveling in the months ahead).

I assume the winds will shift, and we’ll have plenty of warm(er) weather yet this fall. Winter doesn’t technically begin until the Solstice on December 22 (for us in Minnesnowta, it actually comes at 9:28 PM on the 21st). Global warming has shifted winter into generally late arrivals and lingering exits. Sometimes the answer to the Third Question is no, although the kids usually get a White Christmas.

I loved the warm weather when I lived in Los Angeles. I loved the desert, too. Some find it hot, empty, and endless, but to me it’s a satisfying dry heat, a gorgeous palette of earthtones, and a fascinating ecology. But, absent the occasional interesting storm, the region does lack for much in the way of weather variation.

Around here Mom Nature changes her outfit regularly (I especially love her autumn outfits). Today is the 31st. By pure coincidence, I happened to capture what she was wearing on the 13th:

Dressed for water sports. In particular, no hint of snowpants or a parka.

Although, the topic of boots does arise.

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Speaking of Mom’s great autumn outfits (and how quickly they shift), just the other day I was driving to a friend’s house in another part of town and had to pull over and stop for a photo:

Of course, it doesn’t pop in the photo as it did IRL (even though I goosed the color saturation just a hair to try to simulate how eye-catching it was). Generally, it’s her breath-taking spectrum of scarlets and golds I love most, but something about the busy pixelation of the greens and yellows forced me to make a big loop around and back so I could pull over and take the photo.

There’s even a dash of scarlet to make the autumnal point.

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And on that note, back to a project that’s been consuming lots of brain (and CPU) cycles the last few days. Here’s a peek at an intermediate result (more of a test, really):

Exactly what it is will have to wait for a future post. Suffice for now to say that it’s the first rendering of some software I’m writing to generalize the rotation of given segments of a cube for a video about how a cube unfolds into eleven different two-dimensional nets:

Eleven is such an awkward number for laying out N of something. There’s just no comfortable grouping; there’s always a sore thumb. Each of the above patterns can be folded into a cube. More to the mathematical point, these are the only unique shapes a cube can be unfolded into (rotations and reflections of a pattern don’t count as unique).

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BTW: You can, if so inclined, click on the pictures for a larger (1600×1200 pixels) version. (Except for that last one of the eleven cube nets.) That one of the green and yellow leaves might be worth a peek.

BTW#2: In the hour or so it took me to write this, the sun continued to shine and warm things up a bit. Literally, a bit. To 34° (point nine; almost 35°).

Stay warm, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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