Today it is 46 degrees and sunny at 10 AM (horrors!) but until today the last few days have been cold. It has barely topped freezing. And yet every day while cross country skiing I have noticed that there is less and less snow. The snow has not been melting but rather it has been evaporating or, to put it scientifically, sublimating. Sublimation is when a solid transforms to a gas without going through a liquid phase. And that's what's been happening to our snow.
And these days the sun is strong. The snow is mostly gone from all the sunny south-facing slopes but still very deep on the north-facing slopes. It's kind of cool to look at the landscape from different angles. At one angle - looking north it looks like spring with no snow anywhere. But look in the other direction and it is all snow covered.
I also noticed that the bears are waking up. This week the dogs and I found the tracks of a waking bear. We followed his tracks back to where he had bedded down for the night. It seems he just meandered around and we even found where he dug in the snow a bit. He's probably sleepy.
Patrick
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