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Why Nature Is Amazing
Stay with me. This one’s going to be even a little bit nerdier than my usual posts.
I can’t help but marvel at nature. Think about it for a moment. In a period of about 12 hours, approximately 14 inches of snow fell over a 15 square mile area around my hometown.
- 14 inches over 15 square miles is 7.3 billion cubic feet of snow.
- Taking a cubic foot of snow and melting it yields approximately 1/3 gallon of liquid water.
- Therefore, 7.3 billion cubic feet of snow is the equivalent of roughly 2.4 billion gallons of liquid water.
- A gallon of water weighs approximately 8 pounds (US). 2.4 billion gallons of liquid water, therefore, weighs 19.2 billion pounds.
Time to think again. 19.2 billion pounds of water got into the atmosphere, formed clouds, made its way to where I live, then gently deposited all that weight on the ground without crushing every single structure, object, and person in its path.
If 19.2 billion pounds fell five miles out of the sky all at once, literally everything in its path would be destroyed. Just 3 pounds falling from that far up would do considerable damage to whatever it hit.
Yet nature has the capacity to deposit all that weight with relatively small amounts of damage.
There’s a neverending list of way that nature is awesome, but this is one that really grabbed my attention today.
Thanks for reading!
