This snow event has ended.
But you can watch the 02/10/21 - 02/12/21 time lapse by clicking the video on the right!
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Hot Breakfast! is a band from Wilmington, Delaware. They're Delaware's premier acoustic dork-rock power duo. And because they're dorks, they set up a webcam to keep track of how much snow accumulated on an inverted bucket in their backyard. And because you're awesome, you're here looking at it. You can find out more about the band, their free shows, and this historical snowbucket below.
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We plan to continue these semi-weekly shows until the State of Emergency in Delaware is lifted and we're back to normal... likely Spring 2021.
Or, have a look at our concert calendar! (scroll down after you click)
About the band...
HOT BREAKFAST! is Delaware's premier acoustic dork-rock power duo, featuring Jill Knapp and Matt Casarino. Formed in 2009, we've performed all around this country, from small cafes to large festivals. During the Coronavirus pandemic, we began livestreaming short 15-20 minute "Coffee Break Concerts" from 3:00 - 3:20PM EST twice weekly on Facebook Live, and this Wednesday, February 24, 2021) we'll be playing our 100th covid show from our living room! Why not join us? No Facebook account needed to watch, and it's totally free. We do this to spread joy, no strings attached. <3
Enter Tom, one of the fathers of the internet, from Philadelphia, some 30 miles north of Jill's Delaware snowbucket/cam. He automatically downloaded the latest webcam snowbucket image, and then wrote a php script to count the number of white pixels on top of the snowbucket before it hit the black backdrop of the measuring stick. Using some fancy calculations, he was able to determine how deep the snow was, which would then be displayed next to the image of the bucket, along with some fancy graphs and such. It was amaaaaazing.
It got famous in nerd circles. People in businesses based office pools around its calculations. The link was even passed around by some hacker groups who were pleasantly amused and impressed by the whole thing.
History of the Snowbucket...
History of the Snowbucket: This snowcam used to live on the (now defunct) boutell.com. Back then, it was a much more technologically-advanced and far nerdier endeavor, and took two people in two different states to run. In its prior version, Jill would have the webcam set up just as you pretty much see it here, with the captured images uploading to seekrit FTP location. Unfortunately, the webcam technology was still kinda crappy back then, so you couldn't see the lines on the measuring stick very clearly. And since necessity is the mother of invention, here's where the ridiculously silly, astoundingly awesome, and sometimes accurate magic happened:
Someday we may be back with our old php-pixel-countin' ways just because it's fun. But Tom, our partner in snowbucket calculation crime, is busy with family and work and life during the pandemic, and had to take a break. We don't blame him for a second-- it really is a TON of work on his side. No hard feelings, it's all good!
Unfortunately, that php piece is beyond Hot Breakfast's skills (dammit Jim, we're musicians not the father of the internet), so you'll have to settle for a new 4K webcam giving a much higher-res picture of the snow bucket, so you can read the snow depth yourself. :-)