Around Town: Brrr-it’s wintertime

▪ The winter solstice is the day with the fewest hours of sunlight during the entire year. The word solstice comes from the Latin words for “sun” and “to stand still.” For several days before and after each solstice, the sun appears to stand still in the sky.

▪ Rochester, N.Y. is said to be the largest city with the most snow in all of the U.S., accumulating an average of 94 inches every year.

▪ Eighty percent of the fresh water on earth is frozen as ice or snow.

▪ Winter Blues or Seasonal Affective Disorder (also called SAD) is a type of depression that occurs at the same time each year, most commonly in winter.

▪ Igloos are warmed entirely by body heat and can be more than 100 degrees warmer inside than outside.

▪ More than $2.3 billion is spent in road maintenance every year, including salt, trucks and plows.

▪ It’s possible for the entirety of Niagra Falls-all 167 feet-to be frozen at once.

▪ A foot of snow when it melts produces only one inch of water.

▪ The Chinese plum is one of the very few plants that bloom in the winter. It is one of the most beloved blossoms in Chinese art and poetry.

▪ Winter cold kills more than twice as many Americans as summer heat does.

▪ All snowflakes have 6 sides.

▪ The top five coldest countries in the world are Russia, Canada, Mongolia, Finland and Iceland.

▪ Peoples energy levels are lower during cold weather and they tend to be moodier.

▪ The winter solstice is essentially the year’s darkest day, but it’s not the coldest day. Because the oceans are slow to heat and cool, in December seas still retain some warmth from summer, delaying the coldest of winter days for another month and a half.

▪ The most common birthday in the U.S. is September 16, which means that most babies are conceived during the early winter holiday season.

▪ Every winter, at least one septillion (that’s 1 followed by 24 zeroes) snow crystals fall from the sky.

▪ Winter cold increases a person’s appetite.

▪ According to the Guinness World Records, on January 28, 1887, a snowflake 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick fell in Fort Keogh, Montana, making it the largest snowflake ever.

▪ Google searches for “eHarmony” and “Match.com” peak around the winter holidays.

▪ The first Winter Olympics were held in France in 1924.

▪ The coldest temperature ever recorded during a UK winter was -27.2 °C.

▪ Ice is considered a mineral.

▪ One in four people buried in avalanches survive the ordeal.

▪ Chionophobia is the fear of snow.

▪ The word winter comes from the Germanic “wintar” which in turn is derived from the root “wed” meaning “wet” or “water”, and so signifying a wet season.

▪ There is a town in Norway called Hell, and it freezes over almost every winter.

▪ The direction of a ceiling fan should spin clockwise in the winter to push air up and to the walls to avoid a draft underneath the fan.

▪ To stay warmer in the winter cold, dark-colored clothing, like black, is best. Dark colors absorb the sun’s rays.

▪ A bumblebee will perform warm-up exercises in the winter before taking flight.

▪ The Mall of America has no central heating system. All the heat is generated by people, lighting and skylights. They have to run the air conditioner during the cold winter months just to keep the mall comfortable.

▪ Russia has to bomb their rivers every winter to prevent dangerous flooding caused by ice dams.

▪ Some reindeer living above the Arctic Circle live in complete darkness for several weeks of the year.

▪ Every winter at a research station in the South Pole, 50 people are left totally isolated for 8 months.

▪ There is an average of 105 snow-producing storms in the U.S. in a typical year. An average storm will last 2-5 days and carry snow to several states.

▪ The South Pole is the least sunny place-only 182 days a year get sunshine.

This story was originally published December 18, 2017 at 1:06 PM with the headline "Around Town: Brrr-it’s wintertime."