Warm rains.

February  8. 

The warm rains have melted off the surface snow or white ice on Walden, down to the dark ice, the color of the water, only three or four inches thick; but I observe that still, for a rod or more in width around the shores, the ice is white as snow and apparently thicker, probably owing to the reflection from the bottom from the first filling it with air-bubbles.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, February 8, 1853

Rains have melted off the surface snow or white ice on Walden, down to the dark ice. See; February 8, 1854 ("Rain, rain, rain, carrying off the snow and leaving a foundation of ice. "); See also note to February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time.")

Ice is white as snow and apparently thicker, probably owing to the reflection from the bottom. See Walden ("In spring the sun . . .is reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water and melts the under side of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward and downward until it is completely honeycombed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single spring rain. . . .When a warm rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow-ice from Walden, and leaves a hard, dark, or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023