I moved to Washington last year, and was overjoyed to have several beautiful snow falls. Alas, this year, we barely got any, though what we had was lovely. Elsewhere of course, from New England to old England, the story is very different. Massive amounts of snow, and record low temperatures are raising tempers and lowering temperatures all over. The weather has resulted in some pretty interesting conditions, like snow rollers, elsewhere.
Snow rollers are absolutely not
created by PhotoShop; they are quite natural and quite real. With so much snow, in many places the top layer of snow is really a crust of ice. That means that new fresh snow doesn't stick, but is wet and when the ambient air temperature is just above the melting point, and the wind kicks up, especially on a sloping hill or rolling plain, wind and gravity act to create, well hollow snow balls, that gather more snow and size as the wind "rolls" them along the ground and the new fallen snow. This is pretty much the way we make snowballs for snowmen, of course, but snow rollers tend to start out as small balls and become hollow cylinders because the inner layers of snow are lighter and easily frayed away by the wind. Snow rollers are rare because the conditions to form them are very specific and must all be present. Despite the rarity of the weather conditions, here are several documented occurrences of snow rollers.
Most recently, Ron Trevett and his wife Aileen walking their dogs in a snow covered field near their home in Yeovil, Somerset took these incredible pictures. You can see another example, one that shows the shaping effects of wind, here and here—notice the wind-driven path of the snow roller in the second image. I've heard old timers call them "snow doughnuts," and "the devil's spindles," because they do look a lot like doughnuts, or spools with a hole through their center.