Snow...or snow it seemed


 The past 2 or 3 days we have had a "polar vortex" travel over us, with wintery temps and precipitation.  The temps just hovered a smidge above the freezing point, so what snow we got didn't stick.

Several times I have heard or read somewhere that the native Inuit have multiple names for different types of snow.  I guess we do as well, to a certain extent, though for the most part our culture isn't as permeated with snow as theirs would be, I guess.  We have snow, sleet, slush...anything else?  I am sure I missed some.

Yesterday when it started "snowing" here it was small, super dry pellets, like pictured above.  Gary called it a "hominy snow."  I have heard him use that term for it before, but had never bothered to look it up.  I'd always thought it was just local colloquialism, but it led me down a couple of rabbit trails looking up terms and definitions.  

It actually originates from German; Graupel.  I copied and pasted the below from a Google search:

Graupel (/ˈɡraʊpəl/; German: [ˈɡʁaʊpl̩]), also called soft hail, hominy snow, or snow pellets, is precipitation that forms when supercooled water droplets in air are collected and freeze on falling snowflakes, forming 2–5 mm (0.08–0.20 in) balls of crisp, opaque rime.

Looking that up lead me to search "hominy."   To me hominy is sold in a can in the grocery store, though I vaguely remember Gary might have told me that his granddad used to make it.  Just saying the word "hominy" makes my taste buds remember the flavor and texture.  I know it as corn that had been soaked in lye with whole, puffed up kernels.  It's then rinsed and sold in cans; you can buy either the white or yellow corn. But when I searched I found this as the definition:

Dictionary
noun
US
coarsely ground corn used to make grits.

  So hominy snow is so named because it resembles ground corn.  

This leads to me the branching rabbit trail of there being different kinds of hominy.  But hominy in any form isn't really my thing.  Gary likes it pretty well.  We haven't had it in quite a while, so maybe I should get some for him.  But not the hominy grits kind, the whole kernel kind all soupy in a can.  But I will leave the snow/hominy rabbits trails at this point. 

If perchance, you should want to pursue hominy further, you may do so.  Haha...  

After the hominy snow yesterday we got a few snowflake flurries, but like I said, nothing stuck around for long.  Thank goodness.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Oyster

It isn't even halfway through the month yet and I have run out of lists or anything amusing to tell you about the dairy. So here is a poem I picked up on a homesteading forum. It does deal with ag issues, just of a different sort... Enjoy! The Oyster Baxter Black The sign upon the café wall said OYSTERS: fifty cents. "How quaint," the blue-eyed sweetheart said with some bewildermence, "I didn't know they served such fare out here upon the plain." "Oh, sure," her cowboy date replied, "We're really quite urbane." "I would guess they're Chesapeake or Blue Point, don't you think?" "No ma'am, they're mostly Hereford cross . . . and usually they're pink But I've been cold, so cold myself, what you say could be true And if a man looked close enough, their points could sure be blue!" She said, "I gather them myself out on the bay alone. I pluck them from the murky depths and smash them with a...
Read more

Like Cats A'Fightin'

Image
That's a local saying when it's snowing hard. Snowing like cats a'fightin'. You can look out and see the fur flying. Ellen had never been outside while it was actually snowing. She was enchanted. She had to have a bucket of it to carry around. It was in the mid-20s but we took a bit of a walk before coming back in for a nap. The snow is still too dry to be able to make a snowman, it is really powdery. So far we have somewhere between 3 and 4 inches, I would suspect.
Read more

The Blind Calf Story

Image
This happened last month. I thought it was an interesting case. Wed Aug 15th 2007 8:30 AM: Went out and brought new heifer calf and cow in from field. Not too sure how old calf was; umbilical cord sort of dried up, but calf still seemed damp. Left her with cow all morning ‘til maybe early afternoon, then separated them. Beautiful, normal calf. 6 PM Fed calf bottle. She slugged back the whole thing. Thurs Aug 16th5:15 AM (approx) Calf comatose. Or as near as I could tell. She was on her side, non-responsive, drooling, head on ground, eyes closed or just barely opened. I tried to feed her bottle but she only swallowed convulsively once or twice, then milk just drained from her mouth. 5:30 AM. Husband went out and looked at her. Drug her out of pen and out of the way to be taken to boneyard later after chores were all done. She was barely breathing and as I said, totally non-responsive.This was a real grief as the cow she came from is a great milker and to get a heifer from her was a joy....
Read more