Here in Wyoming we don’t have any shortage of winter. With our high altitude and inland location  old man winter likes it just fine in our great state. 

With these winters comes lots of snow. It’s April, and here in the foothills of the Wind  River Range, you can see that while most of  Wyoming is bare, brown, and awaiting spring  green-up – there is some time before winter is over.

This frozen water has some neat attributes that  make life a little more interesting.  Unlike most  substances water expands when it freezes, which is why you’ll want to keep water pipes warm  and add antifreeze to your car’s engine.  If water  in pipes or engine blocks freezes it can cause serious damage by expanding.

And thankfully for us, because ice is less dense than liquid water, it floats.  Since ice floats it nsulates the liquid water underneath keeping it from freezing. 

If ice sank, reservoirs would soon be solid ice with no liquid water underneath. 

And because snow is water in its solid state, it will require a tremendous amount of heat to convert all this snow into liquid water.

Until that happens, this snow is like money in a bank account.  A very important bank account which assures that all this resource didn’t run off before we were able to put it to good use!

From the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service, I’m Eric Peterson