Icebergs, this afternoon

Today the sun came out for the first time all week and hundreds,
perhaps thousands of people left St. John's to walk the two miles to
the top of Signal Hill, or to drive the five or six miles, as we did,
to Cape Spear, to look at today's crop of icebergs. According to the
radio, there was a traffic jam on the road going up Signal Hill at
4:30 when we headed out this way. There were a lot of people there.
We had intended to take an hour's walk along the rocky cliffs but the
temperature dropped pretty substantially as we got close to the Cape.
Right here, when I took this picture, it was six degrees Celcius.
That's about 40 F. We decided we'd enjoy the walk more if it was
warmer, so we drove inland a couple of miles where it was sixteen
degrees C (like, about 61 F). And we walked for an hour there.

Even at 16 degrees, we saw some leftover winter snow in a ditch. It
was what had been ploughed off a parking lot and probably had seen no
sun this spring. It was a pile about a metre deep at its thickest and
probably ten metres long. I think today, 13 June, is the latest I
have ever seen winter snow.

It is not the latest I have seen snow fall here: I got sent home from
work on 15 June 1974 because when we arrived in the morning at the
archaeological dig I was an assistant at, there was six inches of snow
on the ground. That melted by noon.