Tthe ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather.

January 11.

 At 6 A. M. -22° and how much more I know not, ours having gone into the bulb; but that is said to be the lowest. 

Going to Boston to-day, I find that the cracking of the ground last night is the subject of conversation in the cars, and that it was quite general. I see many cracks in Cambridge and Concord. 

It would appear then that the ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather. I had not heard it before, this winter. It was so when I went to Amherst a winter or two ago. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 11, 1859

At 6 A. M. -22° and how much more I know not, ours having gone into the bulb. See February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock."); and note to January 23, 1857 ("The coldest day that I remember recording")

The ground cracks on the advent of very severe cold weather. See February 7, 1855 ("The coldest night for a long, long time. People dreaded to go to bed. The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up");  December 19, 1856 ("[I]n Amherst, I had been awaked by the loud cracking of the 'ground, which shook the house like the explosion of a powder-mill. . . . This is a sound peculiar to the coldest nights."); December 23, 1856 ("The cracking of the ground is a phenomenon of the coldest nights."); January 10, 1859 ("Cold weather at last; -8° this forenoon . . . I hear the ground crack with a very loud sound and a great jar in the evening and in the course of the night several times. It is once as loud and heavy as the explosion of the Acton powder-mills. This cracking is heard all over New England, at least, this night.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 11

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