'Snowflake Bentley' also had a great sense of humor

Every year in the mid winter season, for the benefit of the local students and teachers, I update the life and times of Wilson 'Snowflake' Bentley, who was born on Feb. 9, 1865, at the end of the Civil War in Jericho, Vt. This year, I've added Bentley's well-known sense of humor in a piece written by Duncan C. Blanchard.

In the 60 or more articles written by Wilson Bentley, there is little indication that he had a sense of humor. But in my conversations with people who knew him, it became clear that he did indeed see humor in many of the things that happened in his everyday life, and practical jokes were part of the fun in growing up. Not only did he initiate these jokes, but some were played on him.

When very young, his delight in watching and trying to understand the ways of the birds resulted in learning how to imitate their calls. Sometimes when his mother was working in the house near an open window, he would hide outside and loudly whistle the call of a particular bird. Eventually his mother, curious to see this bird, would come out of the house only to find her young son grinning at her. On other occasions the jokes would be on visiting relatives and sometimes did not work the way Bentley hoped. A great aunt from Montana came to visit one time when Bentley had a red squirrel in a cage with a wheel for the squirrel to run on. One evening he let the squirrel out near her. The squirrel ran up the outside of her dress and bit her ear. The young Bentley got no supper that night and his great aunt returned to Montana, probably vowing never to return to Jericho again.

His niece, Alice, had fond recollections of her uncle. "He always had some project going. He had his croquet games Sunday afternoon. There was always lots of lemonade, cookies, ice cream some days, and he had a special fudge he made from white sugar, and what they used to call vanilla drips. It was delicious. And he had evening parties when we'd hang out Japanese lanterns. One Halloween he scared everybody to death. He fixed up a large bough from a balsam tree. It was wrapped in sheets and he had a face with a florescent design, built like a skeleton. It came out of the third floor window.

Bentley liked to play tricks. Alice told me about the time a cousin came to spend the night with one of her sisters. They were to spend the night in his spare bedroom. "Well he went up there before that night. We used to have wood slats under the bed springs. He sawed then almost in two. So after they had been in bed awhile they heard snapping and cracking and wondered what that was. Pretty soon they found out. The bed went down."

Alice told me what happened in Burlington one day when her uncle saw a big cloud over the Vermont Hotel. "He started on the run with his camera. Came out of Lapierre's camera store. A cop took after him. He thought he stole the camera from Lapierres. Uncle said I'll see you later, and kept running. He got the picture from the roof of the hotel and then told the cop what he was doing. He wanted that cloud before it got away from him."

Bentley's niece Amy told me this story. "In the springtime he loved to go out sugaring. He had a sugaring house up back. One time he was up there boiling sap well into the night. He came back and all my brothers and sisters were around. He said he was working up there and suddenly saw these two bright eyes staring into the darkness. He said they were the eyes of lynx. We were horrified. All we could think of were these animals up there, the lynx. Uncle said 'Yes, two big eyes. They were made of links of chain.'"

In 2013, I found that many schools in northern Japan were using Bentley's photographic techniques to make literally thousands of snowflake slides and photographs in order to prove that "no two snowflakes are alike," as Snowflake discovered nearly a century ago.

In 2014, I featured Bentley's study of 'raindrops.' What did Bentley discover about rain? What didn't he! He found that the largest raindrops are about one-quarter of an inch in diameter (about 6 mm). He suggested that in some cases the size was determined by the size of snowflakes high within the cloud-the flakes had melted before they got to the ground.

Bentley went on to tell how he had found different sizes of raindrops in different types of storms. He believed that there was a connection between lightning and raindrop size. And from an examination of his hundreds of raindrop samples he deduced that rain could have its origin either from melting snow or from a process that involved no ice or snow at all. But sometimes, he concluded, the sizes of the raindrops indicate that both processes may have operated at the same time.

We know today that most of what Bentley suggested is indeed true, although some of his ideas are still being debated. Most astonishing of all is that he recognized a dual origin of rain, an idea that has been firmly established only in the past 20 or 30 years.

During Wilson's 50-year-plus career, which began with his 15th birthday when his parents presented him with a new microscope, he painstakingly photographed more than 5,300 distinct patterns of snow crystals concluding accurately that "no two snowflakes have ever been identical, like fingerprints," he would say.

In 1885, at age 20, Bentley successfully adapted his microscope to a bellows-type camera and soon became the first person in recorded history to photograph a single snow crystal. In fact, in his 66-year lifetime, Wilson collected more photographic negatives of snowflakes than all other observers combined. I recently learned that Bentley also photographed hundreds of raindrops. He likewise was an accomplished self-taught pianist!

As a young boy, Bentley made more than 300 drawings of snow crystals. By the mid-to-late 1880s, he began to document his snowflakes with his camera, often in near sub-zero weather conditions. These beautiful photos became so popular that 'Snowflake' actually sold 200 of them to the famous jewelry store Tiffany's in New York City, who used his snow crystal patterns for designing expensive broaches and pendants. Bentley was also a 'rock hound.' He had an amazing collection of quartz crystals.

On his farm property, Bentley built a shed for taking his pictures. He collected individual snow crystals on a board painted black in an unheated room. He would lift the flake off the board with a splinter of wood and then place the crystal on a microscope slide. He would lastly photograph the snowflake through the microscope using a 50-second exposure. His photographs also proved that all snowflakes are 'hexagonal,' or 'six-sided.'

Bentley's photographs (I have one on the wall in my weather office at home) have been featured in literally hundreds of books, magazines and newspapers around the world in the past century or so.

A recent award-winning children's book "Snowflake Bentley," by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, can be found in most book stores and encourages children of all ages to learn more about him and his beloved snowflakes.

Wilson wrote in 1925, "under the microscope, I found that every snow crystal is a miracle of God's beauty. It seems a shame that this wonder can't be appreciated by others. Every flake is a masterpiece of design by the Creator and no single design has ever been repeated." He went on to add, "when a snowflake melts, that unique design is forever lost, without leaving any record of its beautiful existence."

In 1924, the first research grant ever given by the American Meteorological Society was presented to Wilson 'Snowflake' Bentley. The grant was small. Bentley appreciated the money, but said that "it didn't come close to matching the time and money put into his work." What he especially appreciated was "the recognition by the scientific community denied to him for nearly three decades."

NORTH IDAHO WEATHER REVIEW AND LONG-RANGE OUTLOOKS

As of this Friday morning, Jan. 16 writing, we had measured 26.4 inches of snow on Player Drive for the entire 2014-15 winter season, nearly 13 inches below normal despite almost 18 inches of the white stuff this January in Coeur d'Alene. There has been upwards of three feet of snow in the nearby mountain ski resorts since Jan. 1.

The lack of snowfall, as Randy Mann and I predicted last fall, has been due primarily to a warm 'El Nino' event lingering in the waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean. We've even seen robins in town in the past two weeks.

But, Randy reports that the El Nino "is beginning to fall apart west of South America." This could mean that we may see a slight increase in North Idaho snowfall in late January, February and early to mid March. Temperatures, which have been much milder than normal on the whole, may turn a bit colder, especially in February.

However, the 'GOOD NEWS' is that we're still expecting warmer than normal temperatures locally by Easter Sunday, April 5. Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Cliff Harris is a climatologist who writes a weekly column for The Press. His opinions are his own. Email sfharris@roadrunner.com