![\"snowrollers2\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/files\/2009\/05\/snowrollers2.jpg\" "\\"snowrollers2\\"")
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There they are, sitting on a plain. Evidently, wind conditions need to be just right, and the snow must be precisely the right consistency. I don’t think anyone has seen them form, but I suspect a small clump of snow gets picked up by the wind and rolls into a snowball. When it gets too big it collapses, starts rolling again, picks up more snow, collapses again, and eventually forms these long cylinders. It’s just a guess, but it seems logical. [UPDATE<\/strong>: several commenters have pointed out that the ball need not collapse to make a roller; I had supposed that happened to help spread the ball out horizontally. I stand corrected!]<\/em><\/p>\n Just how bizarre are these things? Here’s another picture:<\/p>\n If you look at the big one on the right, you can see how it looks like a piece of foam that’s been rolled up, a testament to how it formed. It like looking down the maw of the Doomsday Machine<\/a> from Star Trek. I would love<\/em> to see something like this as it happened. I’ve not seen anything like it in Boulder, but we’re getting plenty of snow here, and it’s plenty windy here so one day I hope to spot them. <\/p>\n I’m perpetually amazed at the imagination and creative power of nature. Snow rollers! Who knew?<\/p>\n Tip o’ the Frosty magic top hat to James Oberg<\/a> and my thanks to Tim Tevebaugh for sending me the pictures and giving me permission to post them.<\/em><\/p>\n I pay a lot of attention to weird things, and to weird weather. I thought I had heard it all: mammatus clouds, inversion layers, parhelic arcs. But I can still be surprised! For example, I would’ve sworn up and down that snow rollers — giant rolls of snow that look like huge white Ho-Hos — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"snowrollers5\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/files\/2009\/05\/snowrollers5.jpg\" "\\"snowrollers5\\"")
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