Snow

Some places that are further away from the equator have snow all year round, and some places that are closer to the equator can never have snow. Why does it snow anyways?

According to wxdude.com, snowflakes are formed when water vapour freezes into ice crystals in cold clouds. In summer, our rain actually starts out high in the cloud as snow and on their way down, they melt turning into raindrops.  Whereas in winter, the temperature of the air is often below freezing which allows snowflakes to stay frozen until they reach the ground.

Most people saw snow before and a large number of people see it yearly. However, we think we know a lot about snow but the majority of us actually don’t. So In this blog post, I am going to talk about 5 fun facts about snow.

1. How Much Snow Falls Onto Earth Every Year

According to LEMMiNO, around 28,000 cubic kilometres of snow fall down to earth every single year. To get a better idea of how much snow that is…

28,000 cubic kilometres of snow is equalant to 1 septillion snowflakes. That’s a trillion multiply by a trillion or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

2. No Two Snowflakes Are Identical

Snowflakes are tiny, but if you take a closer look you’ll realise that snowflakes are beautiful. Wilson Bently is a photographer who’s said to be the first photographer to capture an image of a single isolated snowflake and for the rest of his life, he was obsessed with snowflakes.

“Every crystal was a masterpiece of design, and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was lost forever”

by Wilson Bentley

3. Snow Absorb Sounds

Have you ever noticed that when it’s snowing outside ambient noise seems to dampen and everything becomes a lot quieter? Fresh snow is very good at absorbing sound, it weakens vibration which causes sounds to travel a shorter distance. Better keep your buddy close the next time you go to a ski resort so that no one gets lost.

4. There Are 50 Eskimo Words For “Snow”

In English, there’s probably only one word for snow and that’s “snow”, whereas Eskimos have 50 different words for snow. For example “nittaatsuq” means snowy weather, “sullarniq” means snow blew indoors and “qaniit” means snow falling in air.

5. Is Snow Really White?

Snow is not actually white if you take a closer look, snow is actually transparent.

Snow appears to be white is because of their many sides. When light enters an ice crystal, the many sides of the ice crystal cause diffuse reflection of the whole light spectrum. For that reason, snowflakes appear to be white in colour.

Feeling Smarter Now?

Now that you know more about snow make sure you also know how to keep yourself warm when the winter season comes.

Work Cited

From wxdude.com, Wikipedia and LEMMiNO(YouTube)

≈ 490 words