Month: January 2014

Swackett Fun Fact:  One tree can provide enough oxygen for 2 people to live off of for their whole lives.

Swackett Weather Fun Fact:   Grasshoppers and crickets lie dormant in their egg stage throughout the winter, while butterflies, moths and some wasps snuggle in grey or brown cocoons for the season.

Swackett Weather Fun Fact:  Snow Rollers are a rare meteorological phenomenon in which large snowballs are formed naturally as chunks of snow are blown along the ground by wind, picking up material along the way.

Swackett Weather Fun Fact:   In 1940, by  suspending bottles of water outside a hut at their base station in the Antarctic,  American explorer and geographer Paul Siple and his fellow explorer Charles Passel took hundreds of readings of how long it took the water to freeze under various wind conditions.

Swackett Weather Fun Fact:   Chipmunks can’t stuff their mouths with enough food for the amount of fat needed to hibernate during the winter months, so they pack their dens full and wake up only to eat.

Swackett Fun Fact:  In the 1865, Jackson Haines, a famous American skater, developed the two plate all metal ice skate blade that attached directly to his boot.  Haines added the first toe pick to skates in the 1870’s, making toe pick jumps possible.

Swackett Fun Fact:   Because the sun is not a solid, the sun doesn’t rotate at the same speed all the way around; at its equator, it spins at a rate of about once every 25 Earth days, but at the poles it’s more like 36.

Swackett Weather Fun Fact:   The winter of 1779-1780 was so cold ice was piled 20 feet high along the Delmarva Coast that stayed until spring and the upper portion of the Chesapeake Bay along with the entire Potomac River was frozen solid, allowing people to walk from Annapolis to Kent Island and from Alexandria to D.C.

Swackett Weather Fun Fact:  According to folklore, when bees and butterflies disappear from the flower beds you can expect some heavy weather to come your way.

Swackett Weather Fact:  Since the 1970’s, the percentage of Earth’s surface affected by drought has doubled.