{"id":19312,"date":"2017-01-08T12:16:07","date_gmt":"2017-01-08T20:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=19312"},"modified":"2017-01-08T12:31:08","modified_gmt":"2017-01-08T20:31:08","slug":"season-of-devils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=19312","title":{"rendered":"Season of devils"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><i>For everything there is a season, and<br \/>\n a time for every matter under heaven:<br \/>\n a time to be born, and a time to die&#8230;.<\/i><br \/>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Ecclesiastes, chap. 3<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 0px;\">To which a naturalist might add:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><i>a time for rainbows, and a time for steam devils&#8230;.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>In the perceptive passage from <em>Ecclesiastes<\/em>, the <em>teacher<\/em>\u00a0addresses episodic events in the lives of humans. Yet, the insight, that\u00a0<em>for everything there is a season<\/em>, applies equally to the natural world. Normally, one does not look for rainbows in winter, nor for steam devils in summer.\u00a0The study of quasiperiodicity in nature is\u00a0<em>phenology<\/em>. While not\u00a0as poetic as the teacher&#8217;s words, each speaks to nature&#8217;s\u00a0seasonality.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding: 2px 2px 4px 6px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: -6px; margin-left: 8px; width: 330px; float: right; clear: left; color: #555555; background-color: #eeeeee; border: #dddddd 2px solid;\"><strong>What the devil?<\/strong>\u00a0<br \/>\n Dust devils, snow devils, and steam devils are whirlwinds close to the surface. Why this name? <em>Devil<\/em> is from a Greek root meaning <em>to throw<\/em>. Satan earned it by throwing slander. Dust devils earned it by throwing dust.<\/p>\n<p>With\u00a0the arrival of\u00a0cold, I knew the season was here for steam devils over the Lake. The devils playing on the water this year have\u00a0not yet been quite as spectacular as ones I have seen during previous cold snaps, see\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=210\">steam devils<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=9224\">devils&#8217; playground<\/a>. However, until it gets really cold again, these are the best I have.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To be able to see a steam devil, there has to be steam fog to serve as a tracer. With biting cold air flowing over the open waters of the Lake, convective sprites of steam fog abound. Occasionally, convection stretched a velocity gradient into a tall vortex and so created a steam devil. One appears in the foreground of this picture.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-19313\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/steamdevil170105bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A very much taller but fainter steam devil appears in the distance. It probably would not have been noticed had it not been seen against the dark mountainside.<br \/>\n <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-19315\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/steamdevil170105as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die&#8230;. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=19312\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19312"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19361,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19312\/revisions\/19361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}