It Is Sleeting Out: Protect Your Children.

By Mark

Bloggo the Week!, General, The Main Event

I have the window seat at work. We are in a long skinny basement office, so only I have direct view out the window. Yesterday I became the weather man, announcing various conditions. It went from rain, to snow, to hail, to sleet, to freezing rain, to rain, and back to snow. A potpourri of frozen precipitation.

It was as if the frozen precipitation god decided to play all his cards in one turn. Just unload the whole cartridge on us. Luckily the frozen precipitation god can’t control how much precipitation we get, so his mixed assault really only left us wet. Nice try, douche.

Naturally, my ridiculous imagination automatically shifted to thoughts of ‘what if I controlled frozen precipitation as a form of advanced warfare‘. Lets go through my arsenal at hand.

Snow

Classic snow. You either love it or hate it. Assuming I can do research on my enemy demographic, I could certainly use this standard attack on those who don’t like the fluffy stuff. Snow can be difficult to manage in large amounts. However I must be careful not to actually raise enemy morale by snowing them in, giving their children days off, and encouraging outdoor fun such as fort building, snowball fights, snow-angel creation, GT’ing, and snowshoeing.

Hail

This would be my frontal assault. You see it coming, you know it will mess you up, you avoid it if you can. Hail can be a great way to damage enemy equipment, as well as halt all forward progress they may be making. If I manage to make my hail large enough, a well placed hail storm could certainly tilt the battle in my favor. Fun fact, hail is formed by rain drops supercooling and storm winds forcing them to travel up and down the storm cloud. If you crack open a piece of hail it will have rings like a tree, showing how many times it traveled up to the top of the storm. Don’t tell my enemies this though, I prefer they don’t learn science.

Ice Crystals

Ice crystals would be one of my hidden tricks. Up my sleeve for a rainy day (pun intended). Ice crystals or ‘diamond dust’ is pretty much fog, except a fog of tiny ice crystals. You can only imagine what that would do to your stupid face. Thats right, it would rip it apart. However it mostly only can happen in Antarctica and the arctic, where my only foes would be penguins and Santa.

Graupel

This is what happens when supercooled droplets of ice condense on a snowflake. It would be kind of my combo hail-snow, ish. It forms small balls of rime ice, and would likely be my weakest attack. The only point I would use this would be for the unpredictability factor which any great war general should possess. Also when my enemies saw Graupel, they would be like “what the hell is graupel??“. To be used sparingly. On the bright side, Graupel can cause avalanches.

Freezing Rain

This would be the strategic attack. Freezing rain originally starts out as snow, then due to wacky weather systems it melts as it passes through a warmer patch of air followed by a cold patch of air which supercools it. The rain then immediately freezes as soon as it impacts anything at all. IE: Your face. Freezing rain brings everything to a halt, immobilizing the enemy. It is the ultimate fear tactic. Who isn’t afraid of freezing rain? Not only is it an effective offensive assault, it also plays a psychological game. Environmental agencies would likely keep me from using freezing rain too often, as it can do serious damage to trees and nature. I’m so fucking green. Also worth noting, freezing rain makes for pretty sweet photo ops.

Sleet

Sleet is a less offensive mix of freezing rain, rain, and snow. While this is not as publicly terror-inducing as freezing rain, it can still cause very slippery surfaces, and certainly impede whatever mode of transport my foes may be using. Sleet often results in quite slushy wet conditions, which are miserable. This is certainly a morale crusher instead of a fear-tactic. Sleet could be considered the more green approach of getting a similar effect to freezing rain, but seriously, if you have the choice of a bow and arrow, or a crossbow and flaming arrow, which are you going to choose?

Now that I have the strategy down, I just need to figure out how to harness the powers of nature. I have a physics degree, so it shouldn’t be that hard. I’ll keep you updated.

Mark @ December 14, 2007