Week 10- Extreme Weather- Iceland
This week we
learned about extreme weather. The occurrence that caught my attention the most
was blizzards. Besides the holidays, the only other reason why I love winter is
because of the snow. Is it so pretty and makes everything look so nice, it just
warms my heart! (As contradicting as it sounds!) Of course this is to a certain
extent, heavy snow fall can create dangerous conditions.
Chapter 9 of our
books explains that blizzards are created by heavy snow falls and blowing winds
which create low visibility for long periods of time. When low visibility
becomes extreme it is called a whiteout,
because all you can see around is white. Blizzards are more extreme and
dangerous than snow storm because of the combination of heavy snow fall with
strong winds. Blizzards also create a wind
chill effect. This is the effect on exposed skin to these extremely low
temperatures. When these winds are blowing fast the body cools down at a fast
rate which makes the skin temperature to drop as well. When the skin cools down
too much it suffers from frostbite, which is basically frozen tissue. Frostbite
is most likely to happen on the extremities such as the nose or ear lobes. If
the body cools down to an extreme low temperature hypothermia could then
result.
This week I decided
to look into Iceland, like many people, I was under the impression that snow is
a common occurrence here, to my surprise it is not as common as I expected
(like snowy 300 days a year LOL).
njóta (enjoy in Icelandic!)During my research I found that in Iceland there was a record breaking snowstorm in February of this year. There were about 20 inches of snow recorded in the capital city of Reykjavik. The highest the country has had since 1953. All the roads leading to this city were closed due to such large amounts of snow. Although this sounds horrible no human loss was reported. In the contrary, the residents took this as an opportunity to capture jaw-dropping images, some of which I have shared below!
Here is a video on how it is like to drive on a blizzard whiteout!
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ReplyDeleteI noticed there is a huge blank space between the last picture and the video and that there are words cut in the middle in the transition from one line to the next, I tried editing both errors but sadly I wasn't able to make it work.
ReplyDeletethat is ok. Thank you for trying...amazing images....
DeleteAmazing imagery! Germany also goes through heavy periods of snow where there will be heavy blankets, but since the weather tends to be slightly sporadic, it will often melt quickly and cause other problems like sinkholes and flooding
ReplyDelete