Snowshoes and measuring weather!

It was the first time that Waterville Elementary School (WVES) got to use their new snowshoes! The snow was glimmering and the K-2 kids were ready to go. We grabbed some wind meters, thermometers and data sheets and headed off into the woods.

At first the students were wondering why they still sunk in so much. It was a good question as, even in snowshoes, we tend to sink in 4-8 inches. But after we passed someone not wearing snowshoes, they could see that it was much easier with our wide base to help spread our weight around so we did not sink down (as much as that guy)! The gentleman was nice enough to demonstrate how the snow went over his boots for us. Which was nice, but also made us feel good about our choice to go out in the "clown shoes" as one of the students called them.

On our trek we saw red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) tracks come across our path, under a fallen tree and out the other side. We also found 2 different types of canine scat! One from a house dog (Canis familiaris) and one from a red fox (Vulpes vulpes). The fox also left us some some really cool yellow spots in the snow. "What could it be?" I asked as the students began to form a circle around it. I bent down to get a good smell, as I wanted to make sure it wasn't gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) which has a much duller smelling urine. Nope, "definitely the skunky odor of a red fox" I said popping my head back up to see the disgusted looks on their faces. They all replied "wow....awesome..." as I had told them to do in programs past if they were about to use the less interesting term "ewww".

After that excitement we took out our equipment to measure some important factors of weather, temperature and wind speed, and determining which cloud types we had in the sky today. An interesting thing happened while measuring the temperature. It was a nice day, one of the 30 degree days we had last week and we were in the sun so our thermometers read about 38 degrees! Well, after we took the air temperature, we dug a hole and set the thermometers inside and waited for a few minutes. When we took them out, both thermometers read 30 degrees! This was a great demonstration of the insulating power of snow! Some of the students already had put this together before I even asked them "why this could be?" which isn't surprising based on the knowledge they receive from the great parents and teachers there! More proof of their smarts is that they got it even though the demonstration is more obvious if the air temperature is cooler than the snow. But it is true, snow has great insulating potential (which we will talk about in our public program "CREATING SNOW CAVES" coming on the 24th! Sign up!

What a great first use of the schools snowshoes. Looking forward to more adventures!

Jeremy