Captain Blizzard to the rescue 6/7

Jennifer Jane felt like crying with frustration. All her ideas seemed doomed to failure today. It seemed that Frosty was going to freeze into a solid lump and become part of the avalanche and to cap it all, her head was beginning to ache with the effort she was making to try and solve the problem.

The West Wind waited politely while Jennifer Jane looked all round the area to see if she could think of another way of releasing her snowman.

The avalanche had fallen down the mountainside leaving a sort of valley behind it as it fell. The sides of the valley were sheer walls of ice formed when the old snow had started to melt and frozen again just before the next snowfall occurred.

Frosty had landed near the top of the latest fall and the new snow hadn’t had time to stick to the icy walls before falling with him to the bottom of the valley. At that moment a new idea began to form in her head.

“Can you blow against the side of the valley?” she asked, “then I think the ice would make your breath become cold enough to blow the snow away without melting it.”

“Worth a try,” replied the West Wind, “luckily the valley runs north to south so I can blow against the eastern wall. I am the West Wind after all,” he said in reply to Jennifer Jane’s puzzled frown.

She went with him as he walked back to his cloud, she hadn’t thought about the fact that he could only blow from a westerly direction. Perhaps her luck was beginning to work again! She climbed up beside him and together they flew across the valley as near to the western side as they could.

The west wind put his mouth to the funnel and began to blow, gently at first. Sure enough, his breath became much colder after it reached the ice and also changed direction as it bounced of the valley wall. A cold northerly wind was now blowing down the valley and the snow started lifting in lazy swirls.

“Seems to working O.K., it’s quite fun really, I’m a warm westerly, blowing as a cold northerly, I don’t think anyone had better tell the Clerk of the Weather, or most of the winds will be out of a job!”

He blew harder and harder. The snow began leaving the valley in great clouds, while the quantity remaining in the heap at the bottom steadily got less and less.

“There he is,” shouted Jennifer Jane suddenly.