title: Ayesha Takia

text: Takia had two major releases in 2009: action thriller "8 x 10 Tasveer" opposite Akshay Kumar and Prabhu Deva's "Wanted" co-starring Salman Khan. "8 x 10 Tasveer" received mixed reception and performed poorly at the box office. The film stars Takia as Sheila, the fiancé of Akshaye's character. Critical response towards Takia's performance received moderate reviews: Rajeev Masand state, "Ayesha plays the role of Jai's (Akshay) fiancé and it doesn’t leave much of an impression". Taran Adarsh for Bollywood Hungama wrote, "Ayesha's role is natural and graceful". The Times of India noted, "There's nothing really to cheer you up in the desultory proceedings, unless you want to watch Ayesha". "Wanted" was given mixed reviews by most critics and became one of the highest-grossing films of the year, as well as Takia's biggest commercial success to date. Takia's role as Jhanvi, met with positive reviews. Rediff commented, "Ayesha Takia is given a truly raw deal. She's given a role that can only be described as insufficient".


title: Ayesha Takia

text: In 2011, Rao starred in drama "Paathshaala", alongside Shahid Kapoor. The movie generated mixed reviews and emerged as a commercial successful. Her performance as a nutritionist Anjali Mathur was praised by the critics. Her last release of the year was "Mod", which met with a good response. In 2012, she hosted the only season of musical-reality show "Sur Kshetra".


title: Ayesha Takia

text: At the age of 23, Takia married her boyfriend Farhan Azmi; a restaurateur, son of Samajwadi Party leader Abu Azmi, on 1 March 2009, with whom she has a son. Takia is very active on social media, especially Twitter and has been a supporter of wildlife protection. She declared her last name as Takia Azmi on social media after marriage.


title: Ayesha Takia

text: In April 2014, Ayesha denounced her father-in-law, the Samajwadi Party legislator Abu Azmi, for saying that rape victims should also be punished. In a public statement, she stated she is a vegan while posing for a vegan ad for PETA India.


title: Cool S

text: The Cool S (also known as the Stussy S, Super S, Superman S, Universal S, Pointy S, Middle School S, Graffiti S, and by many other names) is a graffiti sign in popular culture that is typically doodled on children's notebooks or graffitied on walls. The exact origin of the Cool S is unknown, but an instance was found in a late 1800s geometry textbook and it became prevalent around the early 1970s as a part of graffiti culture. Contrary to popular belief, the symbol neither originated from nor was used by the U.S. clothing brand Stüssy or the character Superman, though Stüssy did conduct an interview in 2010 with Jon Naar, a pioneer graffiti photographer with many works including this S, dating back to the 1970s.


title: Cool S

text: This symbol and other nearly-identical S-shaped motifs have appeared for at least hundreds of years. A similar pattern can be seen in 14th-century tilework at the central courtyard of the Sultan Hassan Mosque in Cairo, as well as in the background of the 1533 painting "The Ambassadors" by Hans Holbein. It is also visually similar to the ancient Latvian "Zalkša zīme" symbol and the Dacian "Carligul Ciobanului" symbol.


title: Cool S

text: The Cool S consists of 14 line segments, forming a stylized, pointed S-shape. It has also been compared to the infinity symbol. The tails (pointy ends) of the S appear to link underneath so that it loops around on itself in the same way as the infinity symbol does. The Cool S has no reflection symmetry, but has 2-fold rotational symmetry. As illustrated, a common way to draw the shape begins with two sets of three parallel, vertical lines, one above the other.


title: Cool S

text: The origin of the Cool S is unclear. In the 1970s, photographer Howard Gribble took many photos of Los Angeles, many of which feature the number 8 in a similar style to the Cool S. In one of them, a very faded Cool S can be seen graffitied on a pavement. As the photo was taken in 1973, the S itself could date back to the 1960s, making it the earliest photographic evidence of the symbol. Also in 1973, Jon Naar's famous photographs of graffiti in New York featured the symbol many times, here identical to its modern form. Jean-Michel Basquiat's artworks occasionally had the symbol hidden somewhere, and in the one titled "Olive Oil" from 1982 it is labelled as the "classic S of graff".


title: Cool S

text: The name "Superman S" comes from a belief that it was a symbol for Superman, whose costume features a stylized "S" in a diamond shape, but that shape is quite different. Although frequently referred to as the Stüssy S, Emmy Coats (who has worked alongside Shawn Stussy since 1985) has stated that it was never a symbol of the Californian surf company. A possible origin for this is that in 2010 the company uploaded a video to Vimeo and later to YouTube in which one of Jon Naar's 1973 photographs of the symbol can be seen. However, accounts of attribution to Stussy precede the video by at least 20 years.


title: Cool S

text: Swedish YouTuber David Wångstedt, better known online as LEMMiNO, studied the topic for five years and attempted to find the origin of the Cool S, and he found a similar stylized S in the 1890 book "Mechanical Graphics", which was written by Princeton University professor Frederick Newton Willson.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: "Strawberry Fields Forever" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It was released on 13 February 1967 as a double A-side single with "Penny Lane". It represented a departure from the group's previous singles and a novel listening experience for the contemporary pop audience. While the song initially divided and confused music critics and the group's fans, it proved highly influential on the emerging psychedelic genre. Its accompanying promotional film is similarly recognised as a pioneering work in the medium of music video.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Lennon based the song on his childhood memories of playing in the garden of Strawberry Field, a Salvation Army children's home in Liverpool. Starting in November 1966, the band spent 45 hours in the studio, spread over five weeks, creating three versions of the track. The final recording combined two of those versions, which were entirely different in tempo, mood and musical key. It features reverse-recorded instrumentation, Mellotron flute sounds, an Indian swarmandal, tape loops and a fade-out/fade-in coda, as well as a cello and brass arrangement by producer George Martin. For the promotional film, the band used experimental techniques such as reverse effects, jump-cuts and superimposition.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The song was the first track the Beatles recorded after completing "Revolver" and was intended for inclusion on their forthcoming "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Instead, with pressure from their record company and management for new product, the group were forced to issue the single, and then adhered to their philosophy of omitting previously released singles from their albums. The double A-side peaked at number 2 on the "Record Retailer" chart, thereby breaking the band's four-year run of chart-topping singles in the UK. In the United States, "Strawberry Fields Forever" peaked at number 8 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. To the band's displeasure, the song was later included on the US "Magical Mystery Tour" LP.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Lennon viewed "Strawberry Fields Forever" as his finest work with the Beatles. After Lennon's murder in New York City, a section of Central Park was named after the song. In 1996, the discarded first version of the song was issued on the outtakes compilation "Anthology 2"; in 2006, a new version was created for the remix album "Love". Artists who have covered the song include Richie Havens, Todd Rundgren, Peter Gabriel, Ben Harper, and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs featuring Debbie Harry. In 1990, a version by the Madchester group Candy Flip became a top-ten hit in the UK and Ireland.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Strawberry Field was the name of a Salvation Army children's home close to John Lennon's childhood home in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool. Lennon and his friends Pete Shotton, Nigel Walley and Ivan Vaughan used to play in the wooded garden behind the home. One of Lennon's childhood treats was the garden party held each summer in Calderstones Park, near the home, where a Salvation Army brass band played. Lennon's aunt Mimi Smith recalled: "There was something about the place that always fascinated John. He could see it from his window … He used to hear the Salvation Army band [playing at the garden party], and he would pull me along, saying, 'Hurry up, Mimi – we're going to be late.'"


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Lennon began writing "Strawberry Fields Forever" in Almería, Spain, during the filming of Richard Lester's "How I Won the War" in September–October 1966. The Beatles had just retired from touring after one of their most difficult periods, which included the "more popular than Jesus" controversy and being the target of mob violence in reaction to their unintentional snubbing of Philippines First Lady Imelda Marcos. Working on Lester's film without his bandmates left Lennon feeling vulnerable; according to his wife Cynthia, he was also distraught to learn in late October that Alma Cogan, the English singer whom "he'd earmarked to replace Aunt Mimi in his affections", had died in London at the age of 34. In the first versions that Lennon committed to tape, in September, there was no reference to Strawberry Field. Author Steve Turner says that at this stage, Lennon most likely drew inspiration from Nikos Kazantzakis's autobiographical novel "Report to Greco", which he was reading in Almería and "tells of a writer searching for spiritual meaning".


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Like "Penny Lane", which Paul McCartney wrote in late 1966 in response to Lennon's new song, "Strawberry Fields Forever" conveys nostalgia for the Beatles' early years in Liverpool. While both songs refer to actual locations, McCartney said that the two pieces also had strong surrealistic and psychedelic overtones. George Martin, the Beatles' producer, recalled that when he first heard "Strawberry Fields Forever", he thought it conjured up a "hazy, impressionistic dreamworld".


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: As with his "Revolver" compositions "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "She Said She Said", "Strawberry Fields Forever" was informed by Lennon's experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD, which caused him to question his identity and seek to dissolve his ego. In Turner's description, the song's opening line, "Let me take you down", establishes Lennon as a "spiritual leader" in keeping with his statements in "The Word", "Rain" and "Tomorrow Never Knows", while Lennon's contention that in Strawberry Field "Nothing is real" reflects the concept of maya (or "illusion") as conveyed in the Hindu teachings that Lennon was also reading during his weeks on the film set. Lennon said the song reflected how he had felt "different all my life"; he called it "psychoanalysis set to music" and one of his most honest songs. In McCartney's view, the lyrics reflect Lennon's admiration of the nineteenth-century English writer Lewis Carroll, particularly his poem "Jabberwocky".


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The earliest demo of the song was recorded in Almería, and Lennon subsequently developed the melody and lyrics in England throughout November. Demos taped at his home, Kenwood, demonstrate his progress with the song and include parts played on a Mellotron, a tape-replay keyboard instrument he had purchased in August 1965. On the first Almería recording, the song had no refrain and only one verse, beginning: "There's no one on my wavelength / I mean, it's either too high or too low". Lennon revised these words to make them more obscure, then wrote the melody and part of the lyrics to the chorus (which functioned as a bridge and did not yet include a reference to Strawberry Fields). After returning to England in early November, he added another verse and the mention of Strawberry Fields. The first verse on the released version was the last to be written, close to the time of the song's recording. For the chorus, Lennon was again inspired by his childhood memories: the words "nothing to get hung about" were inspired by Aunt Mimi's strict order not to play in the grounds of Strawberry Field, to which Lennon replied, "They can't hang you for it." The first verse Lennon wrote became the second one in the released version of the song, and the second verse he wrote became the last.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: "Strawberry Fields Forever" was originally written on acoustic guitar in the key of C major. The recorded version is not in standard pitch, due to manipulation of the tape speed, and the key is approximately B major. Among musicologists, Walter Everett describes it as "midway between" A and B over the opening minute and subsequently "closer to B", while Dominic Pedler says that some consider it to be closer to A major.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The song begins with a flute-like introduction played on Mellotron, and involves a I–ii–I–VII–IV progression (in Roman numeral analysis). The vocals enter with the chorus instead of a verse. In Pedler's description, it has "non-diatonic chords and secondary dominants" combining with "chromatic melodic tension intensified through outrageous harmonisation and root movement". The phrase "to Strawberry" begins with a slightly dissonant G melody note against a prevailing F minor key, then uses the semitone dissonance B and B notes (the natural and sharpened 11th degrees against the Fm chord) until the consonant F note is reached on "Fields". The same series of mostly dissonant melody notes covers the phrase "nothing is real" against the prevailing G7 chord (F7 in the key of A).


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: A half-bar complicates the metre of the choruses, as does the fact that the vocals begin in the middle of the first bar. The first verse follows the chorus and is eight bars long. The verse starts with an F major chord, which progresses to G minor, the submediant, serving as a deceptive cadence. According to musicologist Alan Pollack, the deceptive cadence is encountered in the verse, as the leading-tone never resolves into a I chord directly as expected. Instead, the leading note, harmonised as part of the dominant chord, resolves to the prevailing tonic (B) at the end of the verse, after tonicising the subdominant (IV) E chord, on "dis"agree"". On the released recording, the second and third verses are introduced by a descending, raga-esque melody played on an Indian board-mounted zither, known as a swarmandal.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: In the middle of the second chorus, brass is introduced, emphasising an ominous quality in the lyrics. After three verses and four choruses, the line "Strawberry Fields Forever" is repeated three times, and the song fades out, with interplay between electric guitar, cello and swarmandal. The song fades back in after a few seconds for what Everett terms a "free-form coda". This avant-garde-style section features the Mellotron playing in a haunting tone – one achieved by recording the instrument's "Swinging Flutes" setting in reverse – scattered drumming, discordant brass, and murmuring, after which the song fades for a second time.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The Beatles began recording "Strawberry Fields Forever" on 24 November 1966. It was the band's first recording session since completing "Revolver", in June, and marked the start of recording for what became the 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". It was also the Beatles' first group activity since the end of their final US tour, on 29 August. Recording took place in Studio 2 at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios) in London, using a four-track machine.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Before the session, in October, Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, had informed EMI that the band would not be releasing any new music for the Christmas market. On 10 November, newspapers reported that there would be no further concert tours by the Beatles. The band's lack of activity and their highly publicised individual pursuits since September were interpreted by the press as a sign that the band were on the verge of splitting up. Their return to the recording studio was given front-page coverage in some newspapers.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: George Harrison, who had been travelling in India during the Beatles' lay-off, recalled there being a "more profound ambience" in the band when they reunited to record "Strawberry Fields Forever". Lennon said that, having failed to connect with anyone on Lester's film set, "I was never so glad to see the others. Seeing them made me feel normal again." The song's working title was "It's Not Too Bad".<ref name="Fontenot/About"></ref> The song took 45 hours to record, spread over five weeks. It was the most complex recording the Beatles had attempted up to this point, and involved three distinct versions of the song; each one was different in structure, key and tempo, yet the released recording was created through a combination of the final two versions.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Together with "Penny Lane" and "When I'm Sixty-Four",<ref name="Irvin/Mojo"></ref> "Strawberry Fields Forever" established the theme for the early part of the "Sgt. Pepper" project – namely, a nostalgic look back at the band members' childhoods in northern England. McCartney has said that this was never planned or formalised as an album-wide concept, but acknowledged that it served as a "device" or underlying theme throughout the project.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: After Lennon played the song for the other Beatles on his acoustic guitar, on 24 November, he changed to his Epiphone Casino electric guitar for the recordings. McCartney played Mellotron, which, following Lennon's lead, the other three Beatles had acquired their own examples of, through Moody Blues keyboardist Mike Pinder. Harrison also played electric guitar, emphasising a bass line beside Lennon's rhythm, and Ringo Starr played drums. McCartney wrote the melody for the Mellotron introduction, although on the first take the instrument appears more in the role of backing accompaniment, relative to its prominence on the officially released recording.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Take 1 opened with a verse, starting "Living is easy with eyes closed", instead of the chorus, which starts the released version. The first verse also led directly to the second, with no chorus between. Lennon's vocals were automatically double-tracked from the words "Strawberry Fields Forever" through the end of the last verse. The last verse, beginning "Always, no sometimes", has three-part harmonies, with McCartney and Harrison singing "dreamy background vocals". Onto this take 1, Harrison also overdubbed slide guitar parts over the choruses, played on the Mellotron's guitar setting and using the instrument's pitch control to achieve the slide effect. This version was soon abandoned; it went unreleased until a new mix was included on the "Anthology 2" outtakes compilation in 1996, although the harmony vocals were cut from the track.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: On 28 November, the band reassembled to try a different arrangement. The second version of the song featured McCartney's Mellotron introduction followed by the chorus. The instrumentation on the basic track was similar to that for take 1, but with the inclusion of maracas. Take 4 was considered sufficient for mix down and overdubs, which included a lead vocal by Lennon, McCartney's bass guitar, and Harrison again playing the slide parts, including what author John Winn terms "Morse code blips", on Mellotron.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Having taken acetates home overnight, the band decided to redo the song again on 29 November, using the same arrangement. The second take that day was chosen as best and subjected to overdubs, such as vocal and bass guitar. In his lead guitar part, Harrison plays arpeggio chord patterns, after Lennon had struggled to master the picking technique. Lennon's vocal was recorded with the tape running fast so that when played back at normal speed the tonality would be altered, giving his voice a slurred sound.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: During the subsequent mix-down process, creating what became take 7, Lennon added a second vocal over the choruses. The other final overdubs were piano and further bass. This version would be used only for the first minute of the released recording.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: After recording the second version of the song, Lennon wanted to do something different with it. Martin recalled: "He'd wanted it as a gentle dreaming song, but he said it had come out too raucous. He asked me if I could write him a new line-up with the strings. So I wrote a new score (with four trumpets and three cellos) ..." For this purpose, another basic track was recorded on 8 and 9 December, with the group attempting the song at a faster tempo than before. At the start of the first session, recording was overseen by Dave Harries, an EMI technical engineer, in the temporary absence of Martin and Geoff Emerick, the Beatles' usual recording engineer. The band focused on achieving a percussion-heavy rhythm track, which included Starr's drums, and backwards-recorded hi-hat and cymbals. The latter process involved writing down the parts before Starr played them, as Harrison had done for his backwards guitar solo on "I'm Only Sleeping". Described by Winn as a "cacophony of noise", the 8 December tape also included timpani and bongos, played by McCartney and Harrison, and other percussion, which, in Harries' account, was provided by Beatles associates Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall and Terry Doran.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: At the start of the 9 December session, parts of two of the fifteen new takes were edited together into one performance, which was then mixed down to a single track on the four-track master. The second of those takes (numbered take 24) consisted of the heavy drum break and accompanying percussion used over the song's coda, and included Lennon's spoken comments "Calm down, Ringo" and "Cranberry sauce". In Lewisohn's description, further percussion, including a pounding drum part by Starr, and Harrison's swarmandal were recorded onto one of the available tracks at this time. Other overdubs, which appear towards the end of the track, included lead guitar (played by McCartney), piano and the coda's reversed Mellotron flutes. Based on the evidence of bootlegs available by 2009, Winn dates the addition of swarmandal to after Martin's orchestral overdubs. With regard to the main piano part, he describes it as the Mellotron's "'piano riff' tape", rather than a genuine instrumental contribution.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The session for Martin's brass and cello arrangement took place on 15 December. The parts were performed in the key of C major but taped so that on playback they sounded in B major. Another mix down was then carried out, reducing all the contributions to two tape tracks. Author Ian MacDonald comments that Martin's contribution heightens the song's Indian qualities, as represented first by the swarmandal, through his scoring of the cellos to "[weave] exotically" around McCartney's "sitar-like" guitar figures before the coda. Further overdubs, on what was now named take 26, were two vocal parts by Lennon, the second one doubling the main vocal over the choruses. Lennon re-recorded one of his vocals on 21 December, singing a harmony over the final chorus. Some piano was also added at this time, along with a snare drum part.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: After reviewing the acetates of the new remake and the previous version, Lennon told Martin that he liked both the "original, lighter" take 7 and "the intense, scored version", and wanted to combine the two. Martin had to tell Lennon that the orchestral score was at a faster tempo and in a higher key than the earlier recording. Lennon assured him: "You can fix it, George."


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: On 22 December, Martin and Emerick carried out the difficult task of joining takes 7 and 26 together. With only a pair of editing scissors, two tape machines and a vari-speed control, Emerick compensated for the differences in key and speed by increasing the speed of the first version and decreasing the speed of the second. He then spliced the versions, starting the orchestral score in the middle of the second chorus. Since take 7 did not include a chorus after the first verse, he also spliced in the first seven words of the second chorus from that take. The pitch-shifting in joining the versions gave Lennon's lead vocal an otherworldly, "swimming" quality.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: During the editing process, the portion towards the end of take 26, before the arrival of the reversed Mellotron flutes and siren-like trumpet blasts, was faded out temporarily, creating a false ending. On the completed take from 15 December, however, the swarmandal and other sounds were interrupted by the abrupt entrance of the coda's heavy drum and percussion piece. Martin said that the premature fadeout was his idea, to hide some errors in the busy percussion track. Among the faintly audible comments over the coda, "Cranberry sauce" was taken to be Lennon intoning "I buried Paul" by proponents of the "Paul is Dead" hoax, a theory that contended that McCartney had died in November 1966 and been replaced in the Beatles by a lookalike.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Shortly before his death in 1980, Lennon expressed dissatisfaction with the final version of the song, saying it was "badly recorded" and accusing McCartney of subconsciously sabotaging the recording. Martin remained proud of the track; he described it as "a complete tone poem – like a modern Debussy".


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: By January 1967, Epstein was under pressure from the Beatles' record company to release a new single by the group. Martin told him that they had recorded "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", which, in his opinion, were "two all-time great songs". The decision was made to issue them as a double A-side single, a format the Beatles had used for their previous single, "Eleanor Rigby" / "Yellow Submarine", in August 1966. The Beatles produced a film clip for "Strawberry Fields Forever", in a continuation of their policy since 1965 of avoiding the need to promote a single with numerous personal appearances on television. It was filmed on 30 and 31 January 1967 at Knole Park in Sevenoaks, Kent. The following week, the band shot part of the promotional film for "Penny Lane" at the same location.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The clip was directed by Peter Goldmann, a Swedish television director who had drawn inspiration in his work from Lester's style in the Beatles' 1964 film "A Hard Day's Night". Goldmann was recommended to the Beatles by their mutual friend Klaus Voormann. One of the band's assistants, Tony Bramwell, served as producer. Bramwell recalls that, inspired by Voormann's comment on hearing "Strawberry Fields Forever" – that "the whole thing sounded like it was played on a strange instrument" – he spent two days dressing up a large tree in the park to resemble "a piano and harp combined, with strings". Writing in 2007, music critic John Harris remarked that Bramwell's set design reflected the "collision of serenity and almost gothic eeriness" evident in the finished song.<ref name="Harris/Mojo"></ref>


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The clip presented the Beatles' new group image, since all four now sported moustaches, following Harrison's lead when he left for India in September 1966. In addition to a horseshoe moustache, Lennon wore his round "granny" glasses for the first time as a member of the Beatles, in keeping with his look as Private Gripweed in "How I Won the War", for which he had also shorn off his long hair. Combined with their psychedelic clothing, the band's appearance contrasted sharply with the youthful "moptop" image of their touring years; this former image and identity had instead been adopted by the Monkees, an American television and recording act based on the Beatles as they had appeared in "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!" In author Kevin Courrier's description, Lennon now resembled a character from an Arthur Conan Doyle mystery, while Harrison looked equally austere, with his beard and heavy balaclava.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Instead of a performance of the song, the clip relies on abstract imagery and features reverse film effects, long dissolves, jump-cuts including from day- to night-time, superimposition and extreme close-up shots. The Beatles are shown playing and later pouring paint over the upright piano; at one point, McCartney appears to leap from the ground onto a branch of the tree.<ref name="Wawzenek/UCR"></ref> In his commentary on the promo clip, music critic Chris Ingham writes:


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Beautifully and spookily lit … much attention is given to close-ups of The Beatles' faces and facial hair, as if the viewer is invited to contemplate the significance of the newly furry Fabs. There's an appropriately surreal air about the film … which, when experienced simultaneously with The Beatles' extraordinary new music, is deliciously disorientating. The final scene of The Beatles pouring pots of coloured paint onto the "piano" is oddly shocking, but brilliantly memorable as a statement of iconoclastic artistic intent.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The double A-side single was issued by Capitol Records in the US on 13 February 1967 (as Capitol 5810), and by EMI's Parlophone label in the United Kingdom on 17 February (as Parlophone R 5570). Aside from the compilation album "A Collection of Beatles Oldies", issued in the UK but not the US, it was the first release by the Beatles since "Revolver" and their August 1966 single. It was also the first Beatles single in the UK to be presented in a picture sleeve. The front of the sleeve contained a studio photo that again demonstrated the band's adoption of facial hair; on the back cover were individual pictures of the four Beatles as infants, which heightened the connection to a Liverpool childhood. Recalling the reaction to the new single and the expectations it created for "Sgt. Pepper", music critic Greil Marcus later wrote: "If this extraordinary music was merely a taste of what The Beatles were up to, what would the album be like?" Comparing the two sides in his book "Electric Shock", Peter Doggett likens "Penny Lane" to pop art in its evoking "multifaceted substance out of the everyday", and describes "Strawberry Fields Forever" as art pop, "self-consciously excluding the mass audience".


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The promotional film for "Strawberry Fields Forever" was the more experimental of Goldmann's clips and underlined the Beatles' ties to the avant-garde scene. The band's new look was the focus of much scrutiny, as promotion for the single and its musical content left many listeners unable to recognise the act as the Beatles. The films were first broadcast in America on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and in Britain on "Top of the Pops", a day before the respective release dates in those two countries. On 25 February, they aired on "The Hollywood Palace", a traditional US variety program hosted by actor Van Johnson. Amid screams from female members of the studio audience, Johnson bemusedly introduced "Strawberry Fields Forever" with the comment: "It's a musical romp through an open field with psychedelic overtones and a feeling of expanded consciousness … If you know what that means, let me know …" The films attracted a similar level of confusion on the more youth-focused "American Bandstand", on 11 March, where Dick Clark invited comments from his studio audience. In the description of author Doyle Greene, the varied opinions towards the "rebranded 'counterculture Beatles'" and their new music demonstrated a "gendering" of popular culture: male reaction was marginally more favourable than female, and women variously focused on the "weird", "ugly" or "grandfather"-like appearance of the band members. Courrier says the hostility towards "Strawberry Fields Forever" was reflective of how pop fans felt abandoned by the Beatles, with one teenager commenting that the group had turned "deliberately weird" and "ought to stop being so clever and give us tunes we can enjoy".


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: In Britain, "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" was the first Beatles single since "Please Please Me" in 1963 to fail to reach number 1 on "Record Retailer"s chart (later the UK Singles Chart). The single was held at number 2 behind Engelbert Humperdinck's "Release Me", even though the Beatles record sold considerably more.<ref name="BB/Timeline"></ref> This was due to chart protocol whereby only the sales of the best-selling side of a double A-side were eligible, and the record's overall sales were effectively halved. Following the speculation that the Beatles were due to disband, their failure to secure the number 1 spot was trumpeted in the UK press as a sign that the group's popularity was declining. At the time, McCartney said he was not upset because Humperdinck's song was a "completely different type of thing", while Harrison acknowledged that "Strawberry Fields Forever", like all of the Beatles' latest music, was bound to alienate much of their audience but would also win them new fans. On the national chart compiled by "Melody Maker" magazine, however, the combination topped the singles list for three weeks.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: In the US, "Penny Lane" topped the "Billboard" Hot 100 for one week, while "Strawberry Fields Forever" peaked at number 8. As in Britain's "Record Retailer", "Penny Lane" was the side favoured by chart compilers in Australia, where the single was number 1 for five weeks. The single was also number 1 in Canada and Norway, and peaked at number 4 in France.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Among contemporary reviews of the single, "Melody Maker" said that the combination of musical instruments, studio techniques and vocal effect on "Strawberry Fields Forever" created a "swooping, deep, mystic kaleidoscope of sound", and concluded, "The whole concept shows the Beatles in a new, far-out light." The "NME"s Derek Johnson confessed to being both fascinated and confused by the track, writing: "Certainly the most unusual and way-out single The Beatles have yet produced – both in lyrical content and scoring. Quite honestly, I don't really know what to make of it." According to Beatles biographer Robert Rodriguez, Johnson's comments typified the "bewilderment" and "mood of disquiet" that the song initially aroused in the music press. "The Daily Mail"s entertainment reporter wrote: "What's happening to the Beatles? They have become contemplative, secretive, exclusive and excluded – four mystics with moustaches."<ref name="O'Gorman/MojoSpecial"></ref>


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: In the United States, the single's experimental qualities initiated an upsurge in the ongoing critical discourse on the aesthetics and artistry of pop music, as, centring on the Beatles' work, writers sought to elevate pop in the cultural landscape for the first time. Among these laudatory appraisals, "Time" magazine hailed the song as "the latest sample of the Beatles' astonishing inventiveness". The writer said that, since 1963:


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: [The] Beatles have developed into the single most creative force in pop music. Wherever they go, the pack follows. And where they have gone in recent months, not even their most ardent supporters would ever have dreamed of. They have bridged the heretofore impassable gap between rock and classical, mixing elements of Bach, Oriental and electronic music with vintage twang to achieve the most compellingly original sounds ever heard in pop music.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: "Time" concluded by saying that the multitude of "dissonances and eerie space-age sounds" on the track were partly the product of altered tape speed and direction, and commented: "This is nothing new to electronic composers, but employing such methods in a pop song is electrifying." In his review of "Sgt. Pepper" in June 1967, William Mann of "The Times" recognised the Beatles as the originators of the vogue for "electronically-manipulated clusters of sound", and he added: "In some records, it's just a generalised effect. But in 'Strawberry Fields', it was poetically and precisely applied."


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Richie Unterberger of AllMusic describes "Strawberry Fields Forever" as "one of The Beatles' peak achievements and one of the finest Lennon-McCartney songs". Ian MacDonald wrote in his book "Revolution in the Head" that it "shows expression of a high order … few if any [contemporary composers] are capable of displaying feeling and fantasy so direct, spontaneous, and original." According to music critic Tim Riley, the song "transformed Lennon's creative arc" by "expand[ing] the hallucinogenic drone of 'Rain' into layered colours that shifted when lit by his vocal inflections" and by inaugurating his use of free-form verse as a lyrical device. Riley adds that while it represented Lennon's "first glimpse of life" outside the Beatles, "part of the recording's ironic pull lies in how the Beatles drape a group sensibility around Lennon's abstract psyche, something only the most intimate of musical friends could do." In his commentary on the track in "The Beatles' Diary", Peter Doggett describes the song as "the greatest pop record ever made" and "a record that never dates, because it lives outside time". He rues the single's failure to top the now-official UK chart as "arguably the most disgraceful statistic in chart history".


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: In the June 1997 issue of "Mojo" magazine, Jon Savage included "Strawberry Fields Forever" in his list "Psychedelia: The 100 Greatest Classics" and wrote: "When this first came on radio in early 1967, it sounded like nothing else, with its wracked vocal, out-of-tune brass section and queasy strings." In 2004, "Rolling Stone" ranked the track at number 76 on its list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time", a placing the song retained in the magazine's 2011 list, then was re-ranked at number 7 on its 2021 list. On a similar list compiled by "Q" in 2006, it appeared at number 31. In 2010, "Rolling Stone" placed "Strawberry Fields Forever" at number 3 on its list of the "100 Greatest Beatles Songs". It was ranked as the second-best Beatles song by "Mojo" in 2006, after "A Day in the Life". The song was estimated to be the 23rd most celebrated song of all time by Acclaimed Music.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Mark Lindsay of the US band Paul Revere & the Raiders recalled first listening to the single at home with his producer, Terry Melcher. In Lindsay's recollection: "When the song ended we both just looked at each other. I said, "Now" what the fuck are we gonna do?' With that single, the Beatles raised the ante as to what a pop record should be." Lindsay said he then ensured that the clips for both songs were broadcast on the Raiders' television show, "Where the Action Is". The Who's Pete Townshend, a regular on London's psychedelic club scene, described "Strawberry Fields Forever" as "utterly bizarre, creative, strange and different".


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Brian Wilson, who had been struggling to complete the Beach Boys' "Smile" album, first heard "Strawberry Fields Forever" on his car radio while under the influence of barbiturates.<ref name="Leaf/BeautifulDreamer"></ref> In the recollection of his passenger at the time, Michael Vosse, "[Wilson] just shook his head and said, 'They did it already – what I wanted to do with "Smile". Maybe it's too late.'"<ref name="Kiehl/BaltimoreSun"></ref> Vosse recalled that they then exchanged laughter, although "at the moment he said it, he sounded very serious." According to author Steven Gaines, the "wondrous and different-sounding" quality of the Beatles' single was one of several factors that accelerated Wilson's emotional descent and led to him abandoning "Smile". In response to a fan's question on his website in 2014, Wilson denied that hearing the song had "weakened" him and called it a "very weird record" that he enjoyed.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The song was influential on psychedelic rock and, in Chris Ingham's description, it established "the standard and style for the entire psychedelic pop movement that would follow". Ian MacDonald recognises the track as having "extended the range of studio techniques developed on "Revolver", opening up possibilities for pop which, given sufficient invention, could result in unprecedented sound images". He views it as having launched both the "English pop-pastoral mood" typified by bands such as Pink Floyd, Family, Traffic and Fairport Convention, and English psychedelia's LSD-inspired preoccupation with "nostalgia for the innocent vision of a child". Among other music historians, Simon Philo describes much of Pink Floyd's first album, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (1967), as being in the style of the "patented British psychedelia" introduced by "Strawberry Fields Forever". David Howard says the production was a "direct touchstone" for Pink Floyd, the Move, the Smoke and other bands in London's upcoming psychedelic scene.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Although the Mellotron had been a feature of Manfred Mann's late 1966 hit single "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James", its appearance on "Strawberry Fields Forever" remains the most celebrated use of the instrument on a pop or rock recording. Mike Pinder, whose band the Moody Blues went on to make extensive use of Mellotron and swarmandal in their work, said he was "in bliss" when he heard the keyboard's flute sound on the Beatles' single. Together with the resonant tone of Starr's drums, the cello arrangement on "Strawberry Fields Forever", as with "I Am the Walrus", was much admired by other musicians and producers, and proved highly influential on 1970s bands such as Electric Light Orchestra and Wizzard.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Walter Everett identifies the song's ending as an example of the Beatles' continued pioneering of the "fade-out–fade-in coda", further to their use of this device on the 1966 B-side "Rain". He cites "Helter Skelter" as a later example, as well as Led Zeppelin's 1969 track "Thank You" and, as a direct response to the Beatles' lead, both sides of the Rolling Stones' August 1967 single, "We Love You" and "Dandelion". According to historian David Simonelli, further to "Tomorrow Never Knows" in 1966, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" "establish[ed] the Beatles as the most avant-garde [pop] composers of the postwar era". He also says that the single heralded the group's brand of Romanticism as a central tenet of psychedelic rock, which ensured that "The Beatles' vision dominated the entire rock music world." In his contribution to the book "", Adam Gopnik describes the single as the 1960s' most important work of art and "the one that articulated the era's hopes for a crossover of pop art and high intricacy".


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Further to the band's pioneering use of promotional films since 1965, the clip for the song served as an early example of what became known as a music video. In 1985, the "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" clips were the oldest selections included in the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)'s exhibition of the most influential music videos. The two films occupied a similar place in MoMA's 2003 "Golden Oldies of Music Video" exhibition, where they were presented by avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson. The "Strawberry Fields Forever" clip also provided the inspiration for the start of the fan vidding phenomenon in 1975. Kandy Fong, influenced by the Beatles not attempting to perform the music, set images from the "Star Trek" TV series to an apparently unrelated musical soundtrack.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Strawberry Field became a popular visiting place for fans of Lennon and the Beatles as a result of the song. In 1975, the Liverpool Public Relations Office published a tourism media package titled "Nothing to Get Hung About", which contained Beatles-related postcards and history, and a map of Liverpool. By 2011, the level of graffiti left by visitors at Strawberry Field had forced the Salvation Army to have the entrance gates removed and later relocated to the Beatles Experience centre in Liverpool.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: In July 2017, the Salvation Army began raising funds – through the sale of T-shirts and mugs emblazoned with "Nothing is real" and other lines from Lennon's lyrics – to help finance the construction of a new building at Strawberry Field. The purpose of the building is to help provide job opportunities for young adults with learning difficulties, and to commemorate Lennon, in both an indoor exhibition and a "garden of spiritual reflection".<ref name="Arnold/Times"></ref>


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: "Strawberry Fields Forever" is one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll" and in 1999 was inducted into the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences' Grammy Hall of Fame. The Strawberry Fields memorial in New York's Central Park is named after the song. The memorial and the Strawberry Fields area of the park, spanning 3.5 acres, was officially dedicated by Yoko Ono in Lennon's memory in October 1985. In addition to referencing "Strawberry Fields Forever" in its title, the 2013 Spanish film "Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed" is a fictional account based on real-life events when a 41-year-old teacher from Cartagena visited Lennon in Almería when he was writing the song.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: In keeping with the Beatles' usual philosophy that tracks released on a single should not appear on new albums, both "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" were left off "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".<ref name="Fontenot/About2"></ref> Martin later stated that this was an approach that he had encouraged, and it was a "dreadful mistake". The Beatles were displeased that Capitol then included the two songs, along with the band's other non-album singles tracks from 1967, on the "Magical Mystery Tour" LP, which the company released as a full-length album, in contrast to the six-track double EP released in the UK and many other countries.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The stereo version of the "Magical Mystery Tour" LP contained a 29 December 1966 mix of "Strawberry Fields Forever", in which the trumpets and cellos pan abruptly from left to right at the point where takes 7 and 26 are joined. By the time the album was released on CD, this mix had been superseded by a stereo remix, originally prepared for a 1971 West German issue of "Magical Mystery Tour", which omitted the panning effect at the join point, but added a right-to-left panning to the swarmandal scale introducing the second and third verses.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: "Strawberry Fields Forever" was sequenced as the opening track of the 1973 compilation album "The Beatles 1967–1970", and the single charted again in Britain, peaking at number 32, when EMI reissued all 22 of the Beatles' UK singles in March 1976. In 1996, three previously unreleased versions of the song appeared on "Anthology 2": one of Lennon's home demos from November 1966; an altered version of the first studio take; and the complete take 7, in mono, edited with an extension of the coda's drums and percussion track from 9 December. In 2006, a newly mixed version of the song was included on the album "Love". This mash-up takes sections from an acoustic demo, take 1 and then take 26, and the ending incorporates elements from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "In My Life", "I'm Only Sleeping", "Penny Lane", "Piggies" and "Hello, Goodbye". In 2015, the promo film was included in the three-disc versions (titled "1+") of the Beatles' "1" compilation. A new stereo mix was created by Giles Martin to accompany the clip. This version appeared on CD in 2017 on the two-disc and six-disc 50th-anniversary editions of "Sgt. Pepper", together with a selection of outtakes from the "Strawberry Fields Forever" sessions, including a complete take 26.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: "Strawberry Fields Forever" returned to the charts in 1990 when the duo Candy Flip, one of the British acts associated with the Madchester revival of 1960s psychedelia and fashion, released an electronic version of the track.<ref name="Sutton/AM"></ref> It peaked at number 3 on the UK Singles Chart in March that year, and number 7 in Ireland. The recording was also popular on college and indie radio in the US, where it peaked at number 11 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: Bill Coleman from "Billboard" commented that the remake was "a stroke of genius", adding: "It's one of those records that make you say to yourself 'how come I didn't think of that' ... An esoteric reading and tasteful production carried by a lazy hip-hop beat. If picked up stateside this could (and deserves to) be massive!" In her contemporary review for "The Network Forty", Diane Tameecha described the single as "what happens when Liverpool meets Manchester". She said that the track was an "instantly likable cover" on which "Relatively sparse accompaniment, in the form of Pet Shop Boys' keyboard sounds mixed with that now 'classic' house drum sound, lends a cool flavor to the old Fab Four workhorse." In his review of Candy Flip's debut album, "Madstock...", Tim DiGravina of AllMusic describes "Strawberry Fields Forever" as an "extremely successful" reworking of the Beatles' original, and admires it as one of the tracks that convey "the joys of perfect, happy places that simply can't exist".


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: "Strawberry Fields Forever" has been recorded by many other artists. Tomorrow, a band that, along with Pink Floyd and Soft Machine, spearheaded London's psychedelic scene, drew heavily from the Beatles' work in their February 1968 release "Tomorrow" and included a cover of the song on that album. The self-titled debut album by American rock band Vanilla Fudge, released in August 1967, contained a brief homage to "Strawberry Fields Forever" at the end of their cover of "Eleanor Rigby". (The homage is entitled "ELDS" on CD versions of the album, and CD versions of the album in fact additionally spell out an acrostic of the song as an homage, with portions of preceding tracks entitled "STRA", "WBER" and "RYFI".) In August 1969, Richie Havens performed "Strawberry Fields Forever" as part of his set to open the Woodstock Festival.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: In 1976, a version by Todd Rundgren was released on his album "Faithful", and Peter Gabriel covered the track in the musical documentary "All This and World War II". Highlighting the line "Living is easy with eyes closed", Gabriel's recording accompanies newsreel footage of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's "Peace for our time" declaration after his meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1938. A recording by Ben Harper was used in the 2001 film "I Am Sam", and Jim Sturgess and Joe Anderson covered the track for the 2007 film "Across the Universe". Los Fabulosos Cadillacs recorded a ska version of the song featuring Debbie Harry for their 1995 album "Rey Azúcar", which was a hit in Latin America.


title: Strawberry Fields Forever

text: The song has also been covered by the Bee Gees, the Bobs, Eugene Chadbourne, Sandy Farina, Laurence Juber, David Lanz, Cyndi Lauper, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Mother's Finest, Odetta, Andy Partridge, the Shadows, the Ventures and Cassandra Wilson. The vocal melody for "Strawberry Fields Forever" provided the piano score of experimental classical composer Alvin Lucier's 1990 composition "Nothing Is Real".


title: Snow

text: Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout its life cycle, starting when, under suitable conditions, the ice crystals form in the atmosphere, increase to millimeter size, precipitate and accumulate on surfaces, then metamorphose in place, and ultimately melt, slide or sublimate away.


title: Snow

text: Snowstorms organize and develop by feeding on sources of atmospheric moisture and cold air. Snowflakes nucleate around particles in the atmosphere by attracting supercooled water droplets, which freeze in hexagonal-shaped crystals. Snowflakes take on a variety of shapes, basic among these are platelets, needles, columns and rime. As snow accumulates into a snowpack, it may blow into drifts. Over time, accumulated snow metamorphoses, by sintering, sublimation and freeze-thaw. Where the climate is cold enough for year-to-year accumulation, a glacier may form. Otherwise, snow typically melts seasonally, causing runoff into streams and rivers and recharging groundwater.


title: Snow

text: Major snow-prone areas include the polar regions, the northernmost half of the Northern Hemisphere and mountainous regions worldwide with sufficient moisture and cold temperatures. In the Southern Hemisphere, snow is confined primarily to mountainous areas, apart from Antarctica.


title: Snow

text: Snow affects such human activities as transportation: creating the need for keeping roadways, wings, and windows clear; agriculture: providing water to crops and safeguarding livestock; sports such as skiing, snowboarding, and snowmachine travel; and warfare. Snow affects ecosystems, as well, by providing an insulating layer during winter under which plants and animals are able to survive the cold.


title: Snow

text: Snow develops in clouds that themselves are part of a larger weather system. The physics of snow crystal development in clouds results from a complex set of variables that include moisture content and temperatures. The resulting shapes of the falling and fallen crystals can be classified into a number of basic shapes and combinations thereof. Occasionally, some plate-like, dendritic and stellar-shaped snowflakes can form under clear sky with a very cold temperature inversion present.


title: Snow

text: Snow clouds usually occur in the context of larger weather systems, the most important of which is the low-pressure area, which typically incorporate warm and cold fronts as part of their circulation. Two additional and locally productive sources of snow are lake-effect (also sea-effect) storms and elevation effects, especially in mountains.


title: Snow

text: Mid-latitude cyclones are low-pressure areas which are capable of producing anything from cloudiness and mild snow storms to heavy blizzards. During a hemisphere's fall, winter, and spring, the atmosphere over continents can be cold enough through the depth of the troposphere to cause snowfall. In the Northern Hemisphere, the northern side of the low-pressure area produces the most snow. For the southern mid-latitudes, the side of a cyclone that produces the most snow is the southern side.


title: Snow

text: A cold front, the leading edge of a cooler mass of air, can produce frontal snowsqualls—an intense frontal convective line (similar to a rainband), when temperature is near freezing at the surface. The strong convection that develops has enough moisture to produce whiteout conditions at places which the line passes over as the wind causes intense blowing snow. This type of snowsquall generally lasts less than 30 minutes at any point along its path, but the motion of the line can cover large distances. Frontal squalls may form a short distance ahead of the surface cold front or behind the cold front where there may be a deepening low-pressure system or a series of trough lines which act similar to a traditional cold frontal passage. In situations where squalls develop post-frontally, it is not unusual to have two or three linear squall bands pass in rapid succession separated only by 25 miles (40 kilometers), with each passing the same point roughly 30 minutes apart. In cases where there is a large amount of vertical growth and mixing, the squall may develop embedded cumulonimbus clouds resulting in lightning and thunder which is dubbed thundersnow.


title: Snow

text: A warm front can produce snow for a period as warm, moist air overrides below-freezing air and creates precipitation at the boundary. Often, snow transitions to rain in the warm sector behind the front.


title: Snow

text: Lake-effect snow is produced during cooler atmospheric conditions when a cold air mass moves across long expanses of warmer lake water, warming the lower layer of air which picks up water vapor from the lake, rises up through the colder air above, freezes, and is deposited on the leeward (downwind) shores.


title: Snow

text: The same effect occurring over bodies of salt water is termed "ocean-effect" or "bay-effect snow". The effect is enhanced when the moving air mass is uplifted by the orographic influence of higher elevations on the downwind shores. This uplifting can produce narrow but very intense bands of precipitation which may deposit at a rate of many inches of snow each hour, often resulting in a large amount of total snowfall.


title: Snow

text: The areas affected by lake-effect snow are called snowbelts. These include areas east of the Great Lakes, the west coasts of northern Japan, the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, and areas near the Great Salt Lake, Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Baltic Sea, and parts of the northern Atlantic Ocean.


title: Snow

text: Orographic or relief snowfall is created when moist air is forced up the windward side of mountain ranges by a large-scale wind flow. The lifting of moist air up the side of a mountain range results in adiabatic cooling, and ultimately condensation and precipitation. Moisture is gradually removed from the air by this process, leaving drier and warmer air on the descending, or leeward, side. The resulting enhanced snowfall, along with the decrease in temperature with elevation, combine to increase snow depth and seasonal persistence of snowpack in snow-prone areas.


title: Snow

text: Mountain waves have also been found to help enhance precipitation amounts downwind of mountain ranges by enhancing the lift needed for condensation and precipitation.


title: Snow

text: A snowflake consists of roughly 10 water molecules which are added to its core at different rates and in different patterns depending on the changing temperature and humidity within the atmosphere that the snowflake falls through on its way to the ground. As a result, snowflakes differ from each other though they follow similar patterns.


title: Snow

text: Snow crystals form when tiny supercooled cloud droplets (about 10 μm in diameter) freeze. These droplets are able to remain liquid at temperatures lower than , because to freeze, a few molecules in the droplet need to get together by chance to form an arrangement similar to that in an ice lattice. The droplet freezes around this "nucleus". In warmer clouds, an aerosol particle or "ice nucleus" must be present in (or in contact with) the droplet to act as a nucleus. Ice nuclei are very rare compared to cloud condensation nuclei on which liquid droplets form. Clays, desert dust, and biological particles can be nuclei. Artificial nuclei include particles of silver iodide and dry ice, and these are used to stimulate precipitation in cloud seeding.


title: Snow

text: Once a droplet has frozen, it grows in the supersaturated environment—one where air is saturated with respect to ice when the temperature is below the freezing point. The droplet then grows by diffusion of water molecules in the air (vapor) onto the ice crystal surface where they are collected. Because water droplets are so much more numerous than the ice crystals, the crystals are able to grow to hundreds of micrometers or millimeters in size at the expense of the water droplets by the Wegener–Bergeron–Findeisen process. These large crystals are an efficient source of precipitation, since they fall through the atmosphere due to their mass, and may collide and stick together in clusters, or aggregates. These aggregates are snowflakes, and are usually the type of ice particle that falls to the ground. Although the ice is clear, scattering of light by the crystal facets and hollows/imperfections mean that the crystals often appear white in color due to diffuse reflection of the whole spectrum of light by the small ice particles.


title: Snow

text: Micrography of thousands of snowflakes from 1885 onward, starting with Wilson Alwyn Bentley, revealed the wide diversity of snowflakes within a classifiable set of patterns. Closely matching snow crystals have been observed.


title: Snow

text: Ukichiro Nakaya developed a crystal morphology diagram, relating crystal shapes to the temperature and moisture conditions under which they formed, which is summarized in the following table.


title: Snow

text: Nakaya discovered that the shape is also a function of whether the prevalent moisture is above or below saturation. Forms below the saturation line trend more towards solid and compact while crystals formed in supersaturated air trend more towards lacy, delicate, and ornate. Many more complex growth patterns also form, which include side-planes, bullet-rosettes, and planar types, depending on the conditions and ice nuclei. If a crystal has started forming in a column growth regime at around and then falls into the warmer plate-like regime, plate or dendritic crystals sprout at the end of the column, producing so called "capped columns".


title: Snow

text: Magono and Lee devised a classification of freshly formed snow crystals that includes 80 distinct shapes. They documented each with micrographs.


title: Snow

text: Snow accumulates from a series of snow events, punctuated by freezing and thawing, over areas that are cold enough to retain snow seasonally or perennially. Major snow-prone areas include the Arctic and Antarctic, the Northern Hemisphere, and alpine regions. The liquid equivalent of snowfall may be evaluated using a snow gauge or with a standard rain gauge, adjusted for winter by removal of a funnel and inner cylinder. Both types of gauges melt the accumulated snow and report the amount of water collected. At some automatic weather stations an ultrasonic snow depth sensor may be used to augment the precipitation gauge.


title: Snow

text: Snow flurry, snow shower, snow storm and blizzard describe snow events of progressively greater duration and intensity. A blizzard is a weather condition involving snow and has varying definitions in different parts of the world. In the United States, a blizzard occurs when two conditions are met for a period of three hours or more: a sustained wind or frequent gusts to , and sufficient snow in the air to reduce visibility to less than . In Canada and the United Kingdom, the criteria are similar. While heavy snowfall often occurs during blizzard conditions, falling snow is not a requirement, as blowing snow can create a ground blizzard.


title: Snow

text: Snowstorm intensity may be categorized by visibility and depth of accumulation. Snowfall's intensity is determined by visibility, as follows:


title: Snow

text: The "International Classification for Seasonal Snow on the Ground" defines "height of new snow" as the depth of freshly fallen snow, in centimeters as measured with a ruler, that accumulated on a snowboard during an observation period of 24 hours, or other observation interval. After the measurement, the snow is cleared from the board and the board is placed flush with the snow surface to provide an accurate measurement at the end of the next interval. Melting, compacting, blowing and drifting contribute to the difficulty of measuring snowfall.


title: Snow

text: Glaciers with their permanent snowpacks cover about 10% of the earth's surface, while seasonal snow covers about nine percent, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, where seasonal snow covers about , according to a 1987 estimate. A 2007 estimate of snow cover over the Northern Hemisphere suggested that, on average, snow cover ranges from a minimum extent of each August to a maximum extent of each January or nearly half of the land surface in that hemisphere. A study of Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent for the period 1972–2006 suggests a reduction of over the 35-year period.


title: Snow

text: The cities (more than 100,000 inhabitants) with the highest annual snowfall are Aomori (792 cm), Sapporo (485 cm) and Toyama (363 cm) in Japan, followed by St. John's (332 cm) and Quebec City (315 cm) in Canada.


title: Snow

text: After deposition, snow progresses on one of two paths that determine its fate, either "ablation" (mostly by melting) or transitioning from firn (multi-year snow) into "glacier ice". During this transition, snow "is a highly porous, sintered material made up of a continuous ice structure and a continuously connected pore space, forming together the snow microstructure". Almost always near its melting temperature, a snowpack is continually transforming these properties in a process, known as "metamorphism", wherein all three phases of water may coexist, including liquid water partially filling the pore space. Starting as a powdery deposition, snow becomes more granular when it begins to compact under its own weight, be blown by the wind, sinter particles together and commence the cycle of melting and refreezing. Water vapor plays a role as it deposits ice crystals, known as hoar frost, during cold, still conditions.


title: Snow

text: Over the course of time, a snowpack may settle under its own weight until its density is approximately 30% of water. Increases in density above this initial compression occur primarily by melting and refreezing, caused by temperatures above freezing or by direct solar radiation. In colder climates, snow lies on the ground all winter. By late spring, snow densities typically reach a maximum of 50% of water. Snow that persists into summer evolves into névé, granular snow, which has been partially melted, refrozen and compacted. Névé has a minimum density of , which is roughly half of the density of liquid water.


title: Snow

text: Firn is snow that has persisted for multiple years and has been recrystallized into a substance denser than névé, yet less dense and hard than glacial ice. Firn resembles caked sugar and is very resistant to shovelling. Its density generally ranges from to , and it can often be found underneath the snow that accumulates at the head of a glacier. The minimum altitude that firn accumulates on a glacier is called the "firn limit", "firn line" or "snowline".


title: Snow

text: There are four main mechanisms for movement of deposited snow: "drifting" of unsintered snow, "avalanches" of accumulated snow on steep slopes, "snowmelt" during thaw conditions, and the "movement of glaciers" after snow has persisted for multiple years and metamorphosed into glacier ice.


title: Snow

text: When powdery snow drifts with the wind from the location where it originally fell, forming deposits with a depth of several meters in isolated locations. After attaching to hillsides, blown snow can evolve into a snow slab, which is an avalanche hazard on steep slopes.


title: Snow

text: An avalanche (also called a snowslide or snowslip) is a rapid flow of snow down a sloping surface. Avalanches are typically triggered in a starting zone from a mechanical failure in the snowpack (slab avalanche) when the forces on the snow exceed its strength but sometimes only with gradually widening (loose snow avalanche). After initiation, avalanches usually accelerate rapidly and grow in mass and volume as they entrain more snow. If the avalanche moves fast enough some of the snow may mix with the air forming a powder snow avalanche, which is a type of gravity current. They occur in three major mechanisms:


title: Snow

text: Many rivers originating in mountainous or high-latitude regions receive a significant portion of their flow from snowmelt. This often makes the river's flow highly seasonal resulting in periodic flooding during the spring months and at least in dry mountainous regions like the mountain West of the US or most of Iran and Afghanistan, very low flow for the rest of the year. In contrast, if much of the melt is from glaciated or nearly glaciated areas, the melt continues through the warm season, with peak flows occurring in mid to late summer.


title: Snow

text: Glaciers form where the accumulation of snow and ice exceeds ablation. The area in which an alpine glacier forms is called a cirque (corrie or cwm), a typically armchair-shaped geological feature, which collects snow and where the snowpack compacts under the weight of successive layers of accumulating snow, forming névé. Further crushing of the individual snow crystals and reduction of entrapped air in the snow turns it into glacial ice. This glacial ice will fill the cirque until it overflows through a geological weakness or an escape route, such as the gap between two mountains. When the mass of snow and ice is sufficiently thick, it begins to move due to a combination of surface slope, gravity and pressure. On steeper slopes, this can occur with as little as 15 m (50 ft) of snow-ice.


title: Snow

text: Scientists study snow at a wide variety of scales that include the physics of chemical bonds and clouds; the distribution, accumulation, metamorphosis, and ablation of snowpacks; and the contribution of snowmelt to river hydraulics and ground hydrology. In doing so, they employ a variety of instruments to observe and measure the phenomena studied. Their findings contribute to knowledge applied by engineers, who adapt vehicles and structures to snow, by agronomists, who address the availability of snowmelt to agriculture, and those, who design equipment for sporting activities on snow. Scientists develop and others employ snow classification systems that describe its physical properties at scales ranging from the individual crystal to the aggregated snowpack. A sub-specialty is avalanches, which are of concern to engineers and outdoors sports people, alike.


title: Snow

text: Snow science addresses how snow forms, its distribution, and processes affecting how snowpacks change over time. Scientists improve storm forecasting, study global snow cover and its effect on climate, glaciers, and water supplies around the world. The study includes physical properties of the material as it changes, bulk properties of in-place snow packs, and the aggregate properties of regions with snow cover. In doing so, they employ on-the-ground physical measurement techniques to establish ground truth and remote sensing techniques to develop understanding of snow-related processes over large areas.


title: Snow

text: In the field snow scientists often excavate a snow pit within which to make basic measurements and observations. Observations can describe features caused by wind, water percolation, or snow unloading from trees. Water percolation into a snowpack can create flow fingers and ponding or flow along capillary barriers, which can refreeze into horizontal and vertical solid ice formations within the snowpack. Among the measurements of the properties of snowpacks that the "International Classification for Seasonal Snow on the Ground" includes are: snow height, snow water equivalent, snow strength, and extent of snow cover. Each has a designation with code and detailed description. The classification extends the prior classifications of Nakaya and his successors to related types of precipitation and are quoted in the following table:


title: Snow

text: It also has a more extensive classification of deposited snow than those that pertain to airborne snow. The categories include both natural and man-made snow types, descriptions of snow crystals as they metamorphose and melt, the development of hoar frost in the snow pack and the formation of ice therein. Each such layer of a snowpack differs from the adjacent layers by one or more characteristics that describe its microstructure or density, which together define the snow type, and other physical properties. Thus, at any one time, the type and state of the snow forming a layer have to be defined because its physical and mechanical properties depend on them. Physical properties include microstructure, grain size and shape, snow density, liquid water content, and temperature.


title: Snow

text: When it comes to measuring snow cover on the ground, typically three variables are measured: the snow cover extent (SCE) — the land area covered by snow, snow cover duration (SD) — how long a particular area is covered by snow, and the snow accumulation, often expressed as snow water equivalent (SWE), which expresses how much water the snow would be if it were all melted: this last one is a measurement of the volume of the snowpack. To measure these variables a variety of techniques are used: surface observations, remote sensing, land surface models and reanalysis products. These techniques are often combined to form the most complete datasets.


title: Snow

text: Remote sensing of snowpacks with satellites and other platforms typically includes multi-spectral collection of imagery. Multi-faceted interpretation of the data obtained allows inferences about what is observed. The science behind these remote observations has been verified with ground-truth studies of the actual conditions.


title: Snow

text: Satellite observations record a decrease in snow-covered areas since the 1960s, when satellite observations began. In some regions such as China, a trend of increasing snow cover was observed from 1978 to 2006. These changes are attributed to global climate change, which may lead to earlier melting and less coverage area. However, in some areas there may be an increase in snow depth because of higher temperatures for latitudes north of 40°. For the Northern Hemisphere as a whole the mean monthly snow-cover extent has been decreasing by 1.3% per decade.


title: Snow

text: The most frequently used methods to map and measure snow extent, snow depth and snow water equivalent employ multiple inputs on the visible–infrared spectrum to deduce the presence and properties of snow. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) uses the reflectance of visible and infrared radiation to calculate a normalized difference snow index, which is a ratio of radiation parameters that can distinguish between clouds and snow. Other researchers have developed decision trees, employing the available data to make more accurate assessments. One challenge to this assessment is where snow cover is patchy, for example during periods of accumulation or ablation and also in forested areas. Cloud cover inhibits optical sensing of surface reflectance, which has led to other methods for estimating ground conditions underneath clouds. For hydrological models, it is important to have continuous information about the snow cover. Passive microwave sensors are especially valuable for temporal and spatial continuity because they can map the surface beneath clouds and in darkness. When combined with reflective measurements, passive microwave sensing greatly extends the inferences possible about the snowpack.


title: Snow

text: Satellite measurements show that snow cover has been decreasing in many areas of the world since 1978.


title: Snow

text: Snow science often leads to predictive models that include snow deposition, snow melt, and snow hydrology—elements of the Earth's water cycle—which help describe global climate change.


title: Snow

text: Global climate change models (GCMs) incorporate snow as a factor in their calculations. Some important aspects of snow cover include its albedo (reflectivity of incident radiation, including light) and insulating qualities, which slow the rate of seasonal melting of sea ice. As of 2011, the melt phase of GCM snow models were thought to perform poorly in regions with complex factors that regulate snow melt, such as vegetation cover and terrain. These models typically derive snow water equivalent (SWE) in some manner from satellite observations of snow cover. The "International Classification for Seasonal Snow on the Ground" defines SWE as "the depth of water that would result if the mass of snow melted completely".


title: Snow

text: Given the importance of snowmelt to agriculture, hydrological runoff models that include snow in their predictions address the phases of accumulating snowpack, melting processes, and distribution of the meltwater through stream networks and into the groundwater. Key to describing the melting processes are solar heat flux, ambient temperature, wind, and precipitation. Initial snowmelt models used a degree-day approach that emphasized the temperature difference between the air and the snowpack to compute snow water equivalent, SWE. More recent models use an energy balance approach that take into account the following factors to compute "Q", the energy available for melt. This requires measurement of an array of snowpack and environmental factors to compute six heat flow mechanisms that contribute to "Q".


title: Snow

text: Snow affects human activity in four major areas, transportation, agriculture, structures, and sports. Most transportation modes are impeded by snow on the travel surface. Agriculture often relies on snow as a source of seasonal moisture. Structures may fail under snow loads. Humans find a wide variety of recreational activities in snowy landscapes.


title: Snow

text: Snow affects the rights of way of highways, airfields and railroads. They share a common tool for clearing snow, the snowplow. However, the application is different in each case—whereas roadways employ anti-icing chemicals to prevent bonding of ice, airfields may not; railroads rely on abrasives to enhance traction on tracks.


title: Snow

text: In the late 20th century, an estimated $2 billion was spent annually in North America on roadway winter maintenance, owing to snow and other winter weather events, according to a 1994 report by Kuemmel. The study surveyed the practices of jurisdictions within 44 US states and nine Canadian provinces. It assessed the policies, practices, and equipment used for winter maintenance. It found similar practices and progress to be prevalent in Europe.


title: Snow

text: The dominant effect of snow on vehicle contact with the road is diminished friction. This can be improved with the use of snow tires, which have a tread designed to compact snow in a manner that enhances traction. However, the key to maintaining a roadway that can accommodate traffic during and after a snow event is an effective anti-icing program that employs both chemicals and plowing. The Federal Highway Administration "Manual of Practice for an Effective Anti-icing Program" emphasizes "anti-icing" procedures that prevent the bonding of snow and ice to the road. Key aspects of the practice include: understanding anti-icing in light of the level of service to be achieved on a given roadway, the climatic conditions to be encountered, and the different roles of deicing, anti-icing, and abrasive materials and applications, and employing anti-icing "toolboxes", one for operations, one for decision-making and another for personnel. The elements to the toolboxes are:


title: Snow

text: The manual offers matrices that address different types of snow and the rate of snowfall to tailor applications appropriately and efficiently.


title: Snow

text: Snow fences, constructed upwind of roadways control snow drifting by causing windblown, drifting snow to accumulate in a desired place. They are also used on railways. Additionally, farmers and ranchers use snow fences to create drifts in basins for a ready supply of water in the spring.


title: Snow

text: In order to keep airports open during winter storms, runways and taxiways require snow removal. Unlike roadways, where chloride chemical treatment is common to prevent snow from bonding to the pavement surface, such chemicals are typically banned from airports because of their strong corrosive effect on aluminum aircraft. Consequently, mechanical brushes are often used to complement the action of snow plows. Given the width of runways on airfields that handle large aircraft, vehicles with large plow blades, an echelon of plow vehicles or rotary snowplows are used to clear snow on runways and taxiways. Terminal aprons may require or more to be cleared.


title: Snow

text: Properly equipped aircraft are able to fly through snowstorms under instrument flight rules. Prior to takeoff, during snowstorms they require deicing fluid to prevent accumulation and freezing of snow and other precipitation on wings and fuselages, which may compromise the safety of the aircraft and its occupants. In flight, aircraft rely on a variety of mechanisms to avoid rime and other types of icing in clouds, these include pulsing pneumatic boots, electro-thermal areas that generate heat, and fluid deicers that bleed onto the surface.


title: Snow

text: Railroads have traditionally employed two types of snow plows for clearing track, the wedge plow, which casts snow to both sides, and the rotary snowplow, which is suited for addressing heavy snowfall and casting snow far to one side or the other. Prior to the invention of the rotary snowplow ca. 1865, it required multiple locomotives to drive a wedge plow through deep snow. Subsequent to clearing the track with such plows, a "flanger" is used to clear snow from between the rails that are below the reach of the other types of plow. Where icing may affect the steel-to-steel contact of locomotive wheels on track, abrasives (typically sand) have been used to provide traction on steeper uphills.


title: Snow

text: Railroads employ snow sheds—structures that cover the track—to prevent the accumulation of heavy snow or avalanches to cover tracks in snowy mountainous areas, such as the Alps and the Rocky Mountains.


title: Snow

text: Snow can be compacted to form a snow road and be part of a winter road route for vehicles to access isolated communities or construction projects during the winter. Snow can also be used to provide the supporting structure and surface for a runway, as with the Phoenix Airfield in Antarctica. The snow-compacted runway is designed to withstand approximately 60 wheeled flights of heavy-lift military aircraft a year.


title: Snow

text: Snowfall can be beneficial to agriculture by serving as a thermal insulator, conserving the heat of the Earth and protecting crops from subfreezing weather. Some agricultural areas depend on an accumulation of snow during winter that will melt gradually in spring, providing water for crop growth, both directly and via runoff through streams and rivers, which supply irrigation canals. The following are examples of rivers that rely on meltwater from glaciers or seasonal snowpack as an important part of their flow on which irrigation depends: the Ganges, many of whose tributaries rise in the Himalayas and which provide much irrigation in northeast India, the Indus River, which rises in Tibet and provides irrigation water to Pakistan from rapidly retreating Tibetan glaciers, and the Colorado River, which receives much of its water from seasonal snowpack in the Rocky Mountains and provides irrigation water to some 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares).


title: Snow

text: Snow is an important consideration for loads on structures. To address these, European countries employ "Eurocode 1: Actions on structures - Part 1-3: General actions - Snow loads". In North America, ASCE "Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures" gives guidance on snow loads. Both standards employ methods that translate maximum expected ground snow loads onto design loads for roofs.


title: Snow

text: Snow loads and icings are two principal issues for roofs. Snow loads are related to the climate in which a structure is sited. Icings are usually a result of the building or structure generating heat that melts the snow that is on it.


title: Snow

text: "Snow loads" – The "Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures" gives guidance on how to translate the following factors into roof snow loads:


title: Snow

text: It gives tables for ground snow loads by region and a methodology for computing ground snow loads that may vary with elevation from nearby, measured values. The "Eurocode 1" uses similar methodologies, starting with ground snow loads that are tabulated for portions of Europe.


title: Snow

text: "Icings" – Roofs must also be designed to avoid ice dams, which result from meltwater running under the snow on the roof and freezing at the eave. Ice dams on roofs form when accumulated snow on a sloping roof melts and flows down the roof, under the insulating blanket of snow, until it reaches below freezing temperature air, typically at the eaves. When the meltwater reaches the freezing air, ice accumulates, forming a dam, and snow that melts later cannot drain properly through the dam. Ice dams may result in damaged building materials or in damage or injury when the ice dam falls off or from attempts to remove ice dams. The melting results from heat passing through the roof under the highly insulating layer of snow.


title: Snow

text: In areas with trees, utility distribution lines on poles are less susceptible to snow loads than they are subject to damage from trees falling on them, felled by heavy, wet snow. Elsewhere, snow can accrete on power lines as "sleeves" of rime ice. Engineers design for such loads, which are measured in kg/m (lb/ft) and power companies have forecasting systems that anticipate types of weather that may cause such accretions. Rime ice may be removed manually or by creating a sufficient short circuit in the affected segment of power lines to melt the accretions.


title: Snow

text: Snow figures into many winter sports and forms of recreation, including skiing and sledding. Common examples include cross-country skiing, Alpine skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling. The design of the equipment used, e.g. skis and snowboards, typically relies on the bearing strength of snow and contends with the coefficient of friction bearing on snow.


title: Snow

text: Skiing is by far the largest form of winter recreation. As of 1994, of the estimated 65–75 million skiers worldwide, there were approximately 55 million who engaged in Alpine skiing, the rest engaged in cross-country skiing. Approximately 30 million skiers (of all kinds) were in Europe, 15 million in the US, and 14 million in Japan. As of 1996, there were reportedly 4,500 ski areas, operating 26,000 ski lifts and enjoying 390 million skier visits per year. The preponderant region for downhill skiing was Europe, followed by Japan and the US.


title: Snow

text: Increasingly, ski resorts are relying on snowmaking, the production of snow by forcing water and pressurized air through a snow gun on ski slopes. Snowmaking is mainly used to supplement natural snow at ski resorts. This allows them to improve the reliability of their snow cover and to extend their ski seasons from late autumn to early spring. The production of snow requires low temperatures. The threshold temperature for snowmaking increases as humidity decreases. Wet-bulb temperature is used as a metric since it takes air temperature and relative humidity into account. Snowmaking is a relatively expensive process in its energy consumption, thereby limiting its use.


title: Snow

text: Ski wax enhances the ability of a ski (or other runner) to slide over snow by reducing its coefficient of friction, which depends on both the properties of the snow and the ski to result in an optimum amount of lubrication from melting the snow by friction with the ski—too little and the ski interacts with solid snow crystals, too much and capillary attraction of meltwater retards the ski. Before a ski can slide, it must overcome the maximum value static friction. Kinetic (or dynamic) friction occurs when the ski is moving over the snow.


title: Snow

text: Snow affects warfare conducted in winter, alpine environments or at high latitudes. The main factors are "impaired visibility" for acquiring targets during falling snow, "enhanced visibility" of targets against snowy backgrounds for targeting, and mobility for both mechanized and infantry troops. Snowfall can severely inhibit the logistics of supplying troops, as well. Snow can also provide cover and fortification against small-arms fire. Noted winter warfare campaigns where snow and other factors affected the operations include:


title: Snow

text: Both plant and animal life endemic to snow-bound areas develop ways to adapt. Among the adaptive mechanisms for plants are dormancy, seasonal dieback, survival of seeds; and for animals are hibernation, insulation, anti-freeze chemistry, storing food, drawing on reserves from within the body, and clustering for mutual heat.


title: Snow

text: Snow interacts with vegetation in two principal ways, vegetation can influence the deposition and retention of snow and, conversely, the presence of snow can affect the distribution and growth of vegetation. Tree branches, especially of conifers intercept falling snow and prevent accumulation on the ground. Snow suspended in trees ablates more rapidly than that on the ground, owing to its greater exposure to sun and air movement. Trees and other plants can also promote snow retention on the ground, which would otherwise be blown elsewhere or melted by the sun. Snow affects vegetation in several ways, the presence of stored water can promote growth, yet the annual onset of growth is dependent on the departure of the snowpack for those plants that are buried beneath it. Furthermore, avalanches and erosion from snowmelt can scour terrain of vegetation.


title: Snow

text: Snow supports a wide variety of animals both on the surface and beneath. Many invertebrates thrive in snow, including spiders, wasps, beetles, snow scorpionflys and springtails. Such arthropods are typically active at temperatures down to . Invertebrates fall into two groups, regarding surviving subfreezing temperatures: freezing resistant and those that avoid freezing because they are freeze-sensitive. The first group may be cold hardy owing to the ability to produce antifreeze agents in their body fluids that allows survival of long exposure to sub-freezing conditions. Some organisms fast during the winter, which expels freezing-sensitive contents from their digestive tracts. The ability to survive the absence of oxygen in ice is an additional survival mechanism.


title: Snow

text: Small vertebrates are active beneath the snow. Among vertebrates, alpine salamanders are active in snow at temperatures as low as ; they burrow to the surface in springtime and lay their eggs in melt ponds. Among mammals, those that remain active are typically smaller than . Omnivores are more likely to enter a torpor or be hibernators, whereas herbivores are more likely to maintain food caches beneath the snow. Voles store up to of food and pikas up to . Voles also huddle in communal nests to benefit from one another's warmth. On the surface, wolves, coyotes, foxes, lynx, and weasels rely on these subsurface dwellers for food and often dive into the snowpack to find them.


title: Snow

text: Extraterrestrial "snow" includes water-based precipitation, but also precipitation of other compounds prevalent on other planets and moons in the Solar System. Examples are:


title: Erin Doherty

text: Erin Rachael Doherty (born 16 July 1992) is a British actress. She played the young Princess Anne in the third and fourth seasons of the Netflix drama "The Crown", and Becky in the BBC/Amazon Prime drama "Chloe" (2022).


title: Erin Doherty

text: Doherty is of Irish heritage and from West Green, West Sussex. Doherty's parents divorced when she was 4 and began acting in Sunday drama classes with her older sister Grace shortly after. She studied at Hazelwick School in Crawley, where she grew up. A talented footballer, Doherty played in midfield for and captained the Crawley Wasps and was scouted by Chelsea Women; she reached the age where she “had to commit” to either football or acting and chose the latter.


title: Erin Doherty

text: Doherty took a one-year course at the Guildford School of Acting (2011–12) before training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School (2012–15).


title: Erin Doherty

text: Whilst training, Doherty won the Stephen Sondheim Society Student Performer of the Year Award (SSSSPOTY) in 2015 for her rendition of "Broadway Baby" from the Sondheim musical "Follies".


title: Erin Doherty

text: Doherty is a frequent theatre actress. Since graduating from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in 2015, she has appeared in a number of productions at some of London's leading theatres. Doherty's performances have consistently attracted positive reviews from leading theatre critics. Michael Billington named Doherty as 'one of the year's greatest discoveries' after her performance in "My Name Is Rachel Corrie", a one-woman play about the activist Rachel Corrie. Doherty starred in Jack Thorne's play "Junkyard", which led What's On Stage reviewer Kris Hallett to write "Doherty is the star here, and by rights will soon be a star full-stop". Her leading performance in Alan Ayckbourn's play "The Divide" at the Old Vic Theatre was described by Dominic Cavendish for "The Daily Telegraph" as having "star-wattage as bright as anything".


title: Erin Doherty

text: Doherty's first television appearance was in a 2016 episode of "Call the Midwife", followed by a role in the 2018 BBC miniseries "Les Misérables".


title: Erin Doherty

text: In 2019, Doherty appeared as Princess Anne in the third season of "The Crown". She knew little about the princess before being cast, and consequently spent hours studying Anne's family history and life. Doherty made a point of only watching footage of the princess at the age she was portraying her, rather than interviews of Anne in later life. Anne's voice is very different from Doherty's, being much lower in pitch; the actress spent time carefully learning and mimicking it, finding that it "was the key into her psyche". Doherty reprised her role as Princess Anne in the fourth season of the series.


title: Erin Doherty

text: In 2022, Doherty is the protagonist in the BBC/Amazon Prime drama "Chloe" alongside Poppy Gilbert as Becky. She was also cast to portray Anne Askew in the psychological horror film "Firebrand".


title: United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance

text: Force Reconnaissance (FORECON) is one of the United States Marine Corps' special operations capable forces (SOC) which supplies military intelligence to the command element of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF). Force Reconnaissance companies unlike USMC division reconnaissance report to the Marine expeditionary force (MEF) and provide direct action and deep reconnaissance during large-scale operations.


text: The Marine Corps also has Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) Raider Battalions that were originally composed of Marine Special Operations Teams formed from Force Recon platoons (Det One) in 2006. MARSOC now has its own separate training pipeline. Force Recon companies continue to operate and focus primarily on direct action, intelligence gathering and maritime raid operations in the visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) role.


text: Two different mission types emerged during the Vietnam War, which are still implemented in the Force Reconnaissance motives today: "Key Hole" and "Sting Ray". These practices subsequently became contemporary as deep reconnaissance, or green operations; and direct action, which are known as black operations.


text: Key Hole patrols were designed purely around reconnaissance and surveillance; usually lightly equipped and armed with defensive weapons—evasive techniques were employed to break contact from the enemy should the need arise, avoiding contact with the enemy was paramount. Sting Ray operations were the exact opposite of Key Hole missions with goals more closely in line of offensive strikes, the FORECON operators were heavily armed and used artillery and/or naval gunfire support, if available.


text: However, what began as a 'keyhole' patrol could become a 'stingray' patrol with little warning. The versatility of FORECON is demonstrated when missions quickly turn, planned or not, from a deep reconnaissance patrol to a direct action engagement.


text: Green operations are the principal mission of Force Recon, to collect any pertinent intelligence of military importance, observe, identify and report adversaries to MAGTF commanders. Like Division Recon (also known as the Marine Recon Battalions), they employ a mixed element of amphibious reconnaissance and ground reconnaissance. This practice fundamentally covers a wide spectrum of reconnaissance but primarily the FORECON operators conduct deep reconnaissance.


text: The Force Recon platoons operate farther inland than their Division Recon counterparts, penetrating deeper into enemy territory from their assigned littoral (coastal) region within a force commander's 'tactical area of responsibility' (TAOR). They operate at such great distances that they are beyond the boundaries, or fan, of any artillery and/or naval gunfire support (NGFS); unlike their Division Recon brethren, whose operations are primarily within the artillery and gunfire support fan. Silence and stealth are vital in reducing chances of compromising their position—if a single round is fired, the mission is deemed to have failed.


text: The United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance detachments, or FORECON, operate in deep reconnaissance, direct action, and the control of supporting arms; to convey military intelligence beyond the means of a commander's area of influence in the battlefield. They are capable of operating independently in combined methods of amphibious and ground operations by utilizing methods of conventional and unconventional warfare in defense of the United States.