Snow baby

Kotlas is pretty snowy, as one might expect from its location in the north of Russia. Here, shamelessly stolen from another blog, is a picture of the playground at the Kotlas orphanage in the dead of winter.

Kotlas orphanage playground, January 2011, via Denise & JJ

Still, fresh air is good for kids, so the thinking goes, and the children will play outside even in the winter.  I don't think they let two-year-olds just wander around in head-high snow (instead, the kids use the playground shelters seen in the picture below), but they do get outside into the snow.

Kotlas orphange playground, April 2011.  The toys in the
first picture are just off-camera to the left.

Detroit, though, doesn't get near as much snow as Kotlas. In fact, here's a graph of average snow depth, courtesy of Weatherspark, for 2011:

Snow depth in Kotlas, Russia: historical average (grey band)
and 2011 actual (bright blue line)

The actual 2011 data shows about 20" of snow on the ground for all of January - March. For reference, Elena was just about 30" tall at that time.  Must be a pretty impressive sight, when you're that small, to see so much snow.

(Oh, and if you're wondering, below is a graph of daily high and low temperatures for 2011, also from Weatherspark. Note the brutal weeks in January and February where the highs were below zero Farenheit.)


Daily high and low temperatures, Kotlas Russia, 2011

Anyway, back on the topic of snow: 20" of snow isn't atypical for some parts of Michigan, but it is atypical for Detroit.  What's more, last winter (2011-12, Elena's first in Detroit) was unusually dry.  We'll normally have a good solid boot-high snow a couple times a year, but last winter we had almost nothing, so Elena got no real chance to play in the snow.

This winter, though, we just got our first real heavy snow about a week ago.  Since I had to shovel the driveway anyway, I conveniently piled all the snow in a few places, making a waist-high (on Elena) fort in the back yard and a three-foot mountain in the front yard.  Finally, Elena had a chance to play in some real Russian-sized snow piles.

Queen of the mountain



No more tiny snowmen!

UPDATE (March 7):
Amusingly, I just found this video, titled "Snowfall in Kotlas, March 7."  It's a little lacking in plot, but does feature some non-stop vertical falling action: