Jesse Bratton climbs on Dwight the Dinosaur.

Photo courtesy of Heidi Bratton

Dwight the snow dinosaur with John Bratton, left, Ben Bratton and Lucy Bratton.

Photo courtesy of Heidi Bratton

Dwight was born on Monday, at first just a vague idea in the minds of John and three of his children enjoying a day off from school. He began to materialize as any snow figure would, from a few balls of rolled-up snow in the Brattons' front yard on Fox Hollow Court.

Then his body began taking shape, and then a long neck and curvy tail. Soon he had a small head and had sprouted pointed stegosaurus “plates” along his back. And there he was, a creature John Bratton said was something of a cross between dinosaurs, stegosaurus and apatosaurus.

A mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain had closed area schools Monday, so Bratton and his children, Ben and Lucy Bratton, both students at Gabriel Richard High School, and 5-year-old Jesse Bratton, decided to do something with the snow in their yard before it melted away.

Bratton said they fashioned Dwight freehand with no model to work from.

“We rolled up a bunch of balls like you would a snowman and went from there,” he said. “There was some debate as to whether we should get a picture to work off of, but we were too wet and slushy to go back inside.”

When they were finished, Dwight stood 12 feet tall and measured about 14 feet from head to tail.

He did have some trouble keeping his head. He was on head No. 3 by the time Bratton left for work Tuesday at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he is the deputy director.

But that did little to diminish Dwight’s glow Monday night as he proudly wore a garland of Christmas lights on his first (and probably last) night on Earth.