What If It Snowed and Couldn't Stop?

It's a Tuesday afternoon in December, you're on your front porch, and it starts to snow. It doesn't stop. In half a minute it's more than New York's biggest storm. By dark it's over your car. Then the power goes, and you watch it all night from your bedroom window. By morning the only way out of the house is that window, onto the snow. Your neighbors are up there too, and the snow keeps rising until only one thing in town is left above it. The numbers are real. The readout is the depth of the snow on your street. The records it passes are the real ones: New York's biggest storm (27.5 in, Central Park, 2016), America's snowiest day (75.8 in at Silver Lake, Colorado, 1921), America's biggest snowstorm (189 in, Mount Shasta, 1959), the deepest snow ever measured on the ground in America (451 in at Tamarack, California, 1911) and anywhere (11.82 m on Mount Ibuki, Japan, 1927), and the snowiest winter ever recorded (95 feet at Mount Baker, Washington, 1998–99). The most anyone has reported falling in one hour is about a foot (Copenhagen, New York, 1966). A foot of light, fresh snow weighs about 3 pounds on every square foot (FEMA); a roof in snow country is typically built to hold about 50 (Minnesota building code). Fresh snow is over 90% air, which is why the street goes so quiet, and on average 13 inches of it melt to an inch of water (NWS). On Greenland's ice sheet, the snow is squeezed into ice about 70 m down. Some of it isn't real. No storm can do this: the snowfall rate is the premise. The town, the house and the neighbors are made up, and so is everything after the first evening. The heights of the things on your street are this film's own models, checked against the real rules where there are any. The last thing left of your town was its name. CHAPTERS 0:00 Everything you know is under you 0:13 The first snow 0:44 Dusk 1:20 Inside 1:57 The power goes 2:40 The night at the window 3:25 Out of the window 3:52 Wednesday morning 5:00 Your roof goes under 6:02 The lanterns 7:43 The church 7:50 Thursday morning 8:38 The water tower #whatif #science #snow #blizzard #weather