What do you call the nasty black mixture of snow and ice that builds up in your car’s wheel wells in wintry weather? Is there a word for this frigid gunk? Various names have been floating around, including hunkers, snard, snowlactites...
bluebird day n.— «It was warm and sunny, what duck hunters refer to as a bluebird day; great for lounging and talking about ducks but not the preferred nasty weather that gets the birds flying.» —“Waterfowler’s rig is rooted in...
Martha tries to unravel the tangled etymological web that connects gossamer, spiders, geese, and warm weather in a late autumn.
heli-mulching n.— «Rice straw dropped from a heavy-lift helicopter rained down like snow Monday on fire-blackened forest land north of Oroville in an effort to control erosion. The process, known as “heli-mulching,” is set to continue...
worm grunting n.— «Earthworms are sensitive to low-frequency vibrations. These drive some types of earthworms to the surface, and in the southeastern US is used in a practice known as “worm grunting,” by scraping a piece of metal on...
“It’s raining, it’s pouring.” But what exactly is the “it” that’s doing all that raining and pouring? This question from a caller prompts Grant to explain what linguists mean when they talk about the weather...