Snow?

I've never seen snow in our part of Africa and am pretty sure that there's not much chance of seeing it here. In fact the temperature today in our hangar was 110 deg F. But, I did take this picture today near our hangar. It sure looks like snow. Let me explain...

Today we picked up our passengers, drove to the airport, went through the formalities with the police, checked weather and filed the flight plan. Then we headed to our hangar, pre-flighted the plane, loaded the bags and passengers and prayed before the flight... all pretty routine for a normal flight day... that was about to change. After shutting the plane doors, Dave (our maintenance specialist) and I stepped back away from the plane. We waited for Ed to start the plane. As he prepared to start the plane, I watched one of the airport fire trucks driving back toward the fire station not far from our hangar. They had the water cannon on top spraying water towards the bushes near their station. Once again, pretty routine stuff as they practice spraying water almost every day. It's a good way to practice and water their bushes at the same time. Suddenly, the "water" seemed a lot thicker coming out of the cannon. They have foam in the trucks that they can spray on the runway in case a plane has to make an emergency landing. I've seen them spray the foam a few times here just for practice, but this time was different. The taxiway coming from our hangar was coated with the foam.

We couldn't send the plane taxiing through the foam, so we headed over there with squeegees to clear the foam off as much as possible. It sure looked like snow as we pushed it to the sides. After we cleared a path, we sent the plane through. We then talked with the firemen, with whom we have a good relationship. They apologized for the inconvenience and assured us they wouldn't practice on the taxiway again. We appreciate the job they do and are grateful for the many times they've helped us over the years around the airport and with tours for kids of their trucks and fire station.