Thursday, March 1, 2012

Snow and Sand

   Wednesday we returned from winter break at Hilton Head, South Carolina.    Beach walks, tennis, fine food and seeing the local sites provided a change of pace from winter weather and skiing.   The beach walks were enjoyable exercise and as well as instructive about how sand and snow have lots of similarities.   Sand blows around objects and settles in drifts much the way snow does.   See the evidence below for the sand drifts down wind from a piece of beach driftwood.
Driftwood - Sand Drift
    Another evidence of the similarity of sand and snow was  obvious one day when the wind was blowing at high velocity down a very wide beach.   We have all seen snow devils on the surface of a road in high wind.   The same phenomena was evident on my beach walk.  I am not sure that the photo below captures the full sight of the sand devils blowing in the wind but the bottoms of my trousers were covered with sand when I exited the beach.

Sand Devils on a Windy Beach
   There are many ways to amuse oneself.   With camera in hand and an observant eye one can appreciate a variety of environments from mountains to the plains to the sea shores.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

whoa

natalie said...

what season did you went the place to find these rare combination.best limousine in Charleston