Snow Day photos: January 10, 2024 (and other dates)

10 Jan Snow Day photos: January 10, 2024 (and other dates)

SOU students making snowmen.
Park and school snow photos.
Artworks with white “hats.”

Snow is beautiful — and destructive

The saga of our 1991 Ashland Tree of the Year gives an example of snow being both beautiful and destructive. The tree is an Interior Live Oak at the corner of Beach Street and Ashland Street. The photo of the tree shown below was taken in 2001. This large oak may have been older than the town of Ashland, perhaps 150 to 200 years old.

The second photo shows what happened to the tree during a snowstorm in the early morning hours of January 28, 2008. The weight of so much wet snow must have been too much for the beautiful oak. This photo shows the downed oak tree covering the entire width of Ashland Street at 8:40 that morning. Arborists cut the entire trunk off a few inches above ground level. The 1991 Tree of the Year was entirely gone … well, the visible part was entirely gone.

The third photo demonstrates nature’s nearly miraculous power of rebirth. As stated above, the visible part of our 1991 Tree of the Year was entirely gone. The roots, however, remained. Look what happened during the past 16 years. The Interior Live Oak is back — from the roots. Not only back, but about 30 feet tall already! I took this photo during our January 10, 2024 snow day in town.

Artworks with white “hats”

Park, school, cemetery

SOU students enjoying “snow day”

Walking home, I chanced upon a lively scene at the newer SOU dorms along Ashland Street. At least seven groups of students were playing in the snow, applying their inner child creativity to snowmen and snow people and even snow thrones. Here are a few photos. I apologize to the students shown whose names I didn’t ask for, so I can’t credit them by name.