Thawed all day yesterday and rained some what last night; clearing off this morning. Heard the eaves drop all night. The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42°.
The snow or crust and cold weather began December 26th, and not till February 7th was there any considerable relenting, when it rained a little; i. e. forty three days of uninterrupted cold weather, and no serious thaw till the 11th, or yesterday.
How different the sunlight over thawing snow from the same over dry, frozen snow! The former excites me strangely, and I experience a springlike melting in my thoughts.
Water now stands above the ice and snow on the river. I find, on shovelling away the snow, that there is about two inches of solid ice at the bottom, — that thin crusted snow of December 26th. These two inches must be added, then, to my measures of January 12th, 16th, 23d,_29th, and 30th.
To-day I find it has settled since the 29th—owing, of course, mainly to the rain of the 7th and especially of last night -- about two inches in open land and an inch and a half in Trillium Woods. There has been scarcely any loss on the west side of the railroad, but 3 3/4 on the east side. It may be owing to the drifting since the 29th.
From January 6th to January 13th, not less than a foot of snow on a level in open land, and from January 13th to February 7th, not less than sixteen inches on a level at any one time in open land, and still there is fourteen on a level. That is, for twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!!
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 12, 1856
Forty three days of uninterrupted cold weather, . . .twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!! See January 9, 1856 ("Probably it has been below zero for the greater part of the day.”); January 26, 1856 ("Methinks it is a remarkably cold, as well as snowy, January, for we have had good sleighing ever since the 26th of December and no thaw.”); February 11, 1856 ("It will indicate what steady cold weather we have had to say that the lodging snow of January 13th, though it did not lodge remarkably, has not yet completely melted off the sturdy trunks of large trees.”)
The Winter of 1855-56 was the coldest winter of the 1850s. Donald Sutherland, The Long, Hard Winter of 1855-56
How different the sunlight over thawing snow from the same over dry, frozen snow! The former excites me strangely, and I experience a springlike melting in my thoughts. See February 23, 1856 (“It is inspiriting to feel the increased heat of the sun reflected from the snow. There is a slight mist above the fields, through which the crowing of cocks sounds springlike.”)
. . .for twenty-five days the snow was sixteen inches deep in open land!! See February 19,1856 ("the snow has been deeper since the 17th than before this winter. I think if the drifts could be fairly measured it might be found to be seventeen or eighteen inches deep on a level.”)
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 12
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
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