For Your January Jocundry

If you think you are cold, consider this:  Snag, in the Yukon Territory of Canada, recorded a temperature of -81.4 F on February 3, 1947.  I wonder who was wintering in Snag that year?

Snowflakes: (And we gots 'em!):  When water freezes inside clouds, ice crystals form. The ice crystals join together, creating snow flakes.  Each snowflake is made up of from 2-200 separate crystals.  Judging from our yard this month, we must have a quadri-kabillion ice crystals of all shapes and sizes.  In December, we (rural Kansas) enjoyed 19" of snow.  And in January?  Day 3 of the pretty stuff...

Bald eagles: Migratory, and IN KANSAS NOW!  

Here are the purported 10 Largest Bald Eagle Wintering Sites in the US:

ALASKA (Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve (Chilkat River, near Haines)
3,000 eagles

CALIFORNIA (Lower Klamath River (near Dorris, CA)
1,100 eagles

WISCONSIN (Nelson Dewey State Park (Mississippi River, near Cassville, WS)
650 eagles

WASHINGTON (Skagit River, 30 miles east of Sedro Wooley, WA)
450 eagles

IOWA Mississippi River Lock and Dam 19 (near Keokuk, IA)
400 eagles

NEBRASKAKingsley Dam (Lake Ogallala, near Ogallala)
350 eagles

MONTANA  Hauser Lake (Canyon Ferry Dam on Missouri River, near Helena, MT)
300 eagles

WYOMING  Woodruff Narrows Reservoir (Bear River, near Evanston)
200 eagles

KANSAS  Perry Reservoir (East of Topeka)
200 eagles

IDAHO  South Fork of the Snake River (near Pallisades, Idaho)
200 eagles  

Eagles do not have vocal cords. They make a high-pitched, shrill squeaking and screeching sounds via the air that passes the bones in their neck.  The sound is created where the windpipe is separated, going to the lungs.  
 

Bald eagles can fly at approximately 30 miles per hour and can dive at 100 miles per hour.

Polar bears: have black skin.
 

Recent genetic studies have shown that some clades (look it up!) of brown bear are more closely related to polar bears than to other brown bears.

Folklore/weatherlore:

Much rain in October,
Much wind in December.  (They got that one right!)

Flowers blooming in late autumn, a sure sign of bad winter coming...  (and my geraniums were still blooming past T'giving!!)  But, I wonder who qualifies what "bad winter" is?

(This will require that someone {besides me} remembers to jot this down in the spring):  The first frost in autumn will be exactly six months after the first thunderstorm of spring.

And finally:

As high as the weeds grow, 

So will the banks of snow.

 

Now, I was out in late November days, running on the Konza Prairie.  It's a tall grass prairie.  And the tall grass, I would muse to myself, was indeed over my head - which is approximately 5'2" high.  But that's grass, and not weeds, per se, so...

Time will tell!

~ Happy New Year