We’ve had a lot of time off from work and school this week thanks to a late-winter snowstorm.

There have been some fun examples of post-snowfall deformation that resulted. Here’s one from my kid’s playground slide:

I posted this on Twitter the other day because it reminded me so much of a detachment fault, a big slab of snow detaching and sliding downhill under the influence of gravity. I like the little tear faults along the edges, too.

Kathy Benison, a geologist at West Virginia University, responded with this example from a car, where the snow slab has curled itself up into a “jellyroll” structure.

And Brian Romans, a geologist at Virginia Tech, replied with this example that shows a really well developed set of folds at the base of another playground slide:

Brian wrote this one up on his (now hibernating) blog:
https://clasticdetritus.com/2014/11/28/playground-example-of-gravity-driven-deformation/

Snow is so great — not only for getting unexpected days off from work, but also for these serendipitous analogue deformation experiments.

Have a happy Friday all!