Winter Day after Thanksgiving

2010-11-26 16:25:01.000 – Mike Finnegan,  IT Observer

Thanksgiving Dinner

It is a nice, wintery Friday up here with yesterday’s 100+ mile views replaced with freezing fog and a variety of precipitation. It has been an interesting day precipitation-wise with freezing rain and ice pellets falling and glaze ice accruing at 22 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a bit unusual as rime and snow would be expected at temperatures that cold, but there must have been a warm layer aloft that it was falling through before reaching us. I’ll give a little reminder on the difference between glaze ice (water ice) and rime ice (frozen fog), although I’m reasonably sure this has been discussed in a past comment at some point. Glaze ice forms (generally) when temperatures are near the freezing point. Fog whose droplets are deposited on an object or rain that falls on an object will freeze to that object, but as temperatures are so close to freezing this takes some time. This length of time allows the air to escape from the water and thus produces clear ice. Rime ice is formed only from freezing fog and usually at temperatures that are cold enough to freeze the deposition much more quickly, thus trapping the air within the ice. This causes it to be white and much more delicate, building out into featherlike structures. Eventually the warm air aloft must have moved on and been replaced by colder air because at 26 degrees F, it was snowing quite heavily. It will be nice to see the mountain covered in white again, especially since it is getting mighty close to December!

On a different note, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving up here, thanks for asking! We each made a different dish, with Brian making the turkey and stuffing, Ryan making green bean casserole, Erica making rolls, myself making pineapple bake stuffing, and our good friend, Chris, from State Park making mashed potatoes and a delicious maple creme brulee with his very own syrup along with a pumpkin pie. It was a whole lot of fun and although we were at work, we were also with our summit family, because that is what you become working up here together over half the year.

And as some folks have requested, here is my Mom’s Pineapple Bake Stuffing recipe.

1. Cream together 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), 1 cup of sugar. Add four eggs, one at a time.
2. Fold in one large can of crushed pineapple, drained.
3. Fold in 6-8 slices of white bread, cubed.
4. Grease a 1 1/2 quart baking dish and add mixture.
5. Bake at 350 F. for 45 minutes, until bubbly.

And there ya have it, quick, easy, and wicked good!

Mike Finnegan,  IT Observer