Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - All About Snow

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

If you live anywhere away from tropical latitudes, you might have experienced snow. In fact, depending on where you live, you might have experienced a whole lot of snow at various points in your life.  As a substance, snow has some very unique properties. On the one hand, it is very simple; it is just ice, but on the other hand, it is also extremely complex.  Snow can be very beautiful, but if you have to deal with it often enough, it can be very annoying and even dangerous.  Learn more about snow, what it is, how it is formed, and how it functions on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you live anywhere far away from tropical latitudes, you may have experienced snow. In fact, depending on where you live, you may have experienced a whole lot of snow at various points in your life. As a substance, snow has some very unique properties. On one hand, it's extremely simple, it's just ice, but on the other hand, it's also extremely complex. Snow can be beautiful, but if you have to deal with it enough, it can be very annoying and even dangerous. Learn more about snow, what it is, how it's formed, and how it functions. On this, episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Several times in my life now, I've had the pleasure of witnessing someone. experiencing snow for the very first time. The first time I saw it happen was during my freshman year of college.

A girl who had lived in my dorm had grown up in Hawaii and had never seen snow. When it began snowing for the first time, she ran outside and couldn't believe that white stuff was actually falling from the sky. Given the demographics of the listeners of this podcast, there are probably a good number of you who have never experienced snow before. And then there are people like myself who have experienced snow that. entire lives. Ever since I was born, I've had to deal with snow every winter. The first time it snows, it's pretty, and it can seem quite peaceful because snow absorbs sound waves. However,

after several months of it, it gets old quick. So, regardless of whether you've experienced snow or not, you can probably at least acknowledge that it's an important meteorological phenomenon. And that brings us to the first thing we have to address. What exactly is snow? You know what when you you see it, but what exactly is it? There are several different definitions of snow you can find in various dictionaries, but they're all pretty similar. Miriam Webster's defines it as, quote, precipitation in the form of small white ice crystals formed directly from water vapor of the air at a temperature of less than 32 degrees Fahrenheit or zero degrees Celsius. In the introduction of this episode, I mentioned that on one hand, snow is pretty simple, and this is because snow is just a form of

ice, frozen water. However, there's obviously more to it than that. Snow is not just frozen drops of water. That would be known as sleet or hail, and that'll be the subject of another episode. What makes snow snow is that it comes in the form of snowflakes. Snowflakes are small light crystals of ice. What makes snowflakes different than sleet is that sleet is frozen liquid water. Snowflakes form directly from cold water vapor, skipping the liquid form of water completely. Snowflakes do not have a uniform shape, size, or structure. It's been said that no two snowflakes are alike, and this is technically not true, but for all practical purposes it is.

One estimate I've seen puts the number of possible snowflakes at 10 to the power of 158, and that is a one with 158 zeros behind it. and that is vastly larger than the total number of atoms in the universe. So I think we can safely say that snowflakes are unique. Despite the fact that every snowflake is different, there is something that they all have in common. Every snowflake has, in some way, six sides. There are eight broad categories that snowflakes can be classified as,

with a further 39 categories that it can be further broken down into and 121 subtypes. Why, if there are almost an infinite variety of snowflakes, do they all have six sides? It seems rather limiting for something that's supposedly so unique. It all has to do with the shape of a water molecule. Water, as you're aware, consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The way they bond is at an angle such that it almost looks like a pair of Mickey Mouse ears, with an oxygen atom being the head and the hydrogen atoms as the ears.

To be a bit more precise, the angle between the hydrogen atoms is 104.5 degrees. When water forms an ice crystal, the positively charged hydrogen atoms are attracted to negatively charge oxygen atoms, and given the angle of the water molecule, the most efficient way the molecules form a crystal is in the shape of a hexagon. Tiny variations in temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind will result in each snowflake. being different, despite all having similar hexagonal shapes. These crystals will collide with each other in the air, causing them to bond with each other and grow in size. This is known as aggregation.

As snow crystals grow larger, they will eventually reach a point where they become so large that they'll start to fall. It will start snowing. However, I should note that while it doesn't happen often, it's entirely possible for single snowflakes, to grow to enormous size. The record for the largest snowflake ever was recorded by a rancher named Matt Coleman in January 1887 outside of present-day Miles City, Montana. It measured 38 centimeters or 15 inches in diameter. There was no photographic evidence of this monster flake.

For snow to reach the ground, the entire distance from the cloud to the ground has to be at or below freezing. It's entirely possible for snow to melt as it's falling, passing through a layer of air above freezing. Assuming that all these conditions are met, snow will eventually reach the ground where it may begin to accumulate. And I say may because if it's early in the winter, the temperature of the ground may be above freezing, and the snow will quickly melt. It's entirely possible that it may accumulate on surfaces such as grass, but melt on other surfaces such as roads with black which capture more heat. Snow that accumulates on the ground is susceptible, depending on conditions, to drifting.

A snow drift is kind of similar to a sand dune. Loose snow crystals can be blown by the wind where they will pile up. Snowdrifts can actually become huge problems. You may have seen photos of entire homes that have been buried by snowdrifts. Snowdrifts can also be created on roads, which can make them impassable. It's surprisingly easy to stop snowdrifts. by putting up barriers known as a snow fence. Snow fences are quite porous,

but they can break up the wind and prevent snow from accumulating into drifts. Where I live, some farm fuels will have snow fences constructed in the winter to prevent snow drifts from developing on the highways. Measuring snowfall isn't as easy as you think it might be, and there's also a difference between snow depth and snowfall. Both measurements are highly inexact.

Snowfall has to do with the amount of snow that falls over a short period of time, usually measured as 24 hours. The measurement is usually taken on a device known as a snowboard, but it's not the kind that you ride down a mountain. A snowboard is just a small square board that's colored white so as not to absorb any excess heat and is usually elevated off the ground. It should also be placed in an area where drifting is not likely to occur. Observers then take a measurement at the same time every day and then clear off the snowboard to measure the next day's accumulation. The reason why measuring snowfall is so inexact is the same reason why measuring total snow depth is in exact. In theory, total snow depth is just the sum of all the individual snowfalls in a season. However, after snow falls, several things can happen to it.

The top layer can melt from sunshine. It can sublimate going directly from a size. to a vapor, but most importantly, it can become compacted. Snow is usually pretty light, and when it falls, there's air around all the individual snowflakes. However, as more snow falls on top of it, the air is pushed out and the individual flakes are compressed. In extreme cases where the snow never melts, the snow compresses up so much, you wind up with glaciers and ice caps. This is true for a 24-hour period as well, but it's especially true over the course of an entire season.

That being said, the records for snowfall and snow accumulation are truly astounding. The record for snowfall in a 24-hour period was set in Silver Lake, Colorado on April 14th and 15th, 1921. A total of 76 inches, or 6.3 feet, or 1.9 meters of snow fell in 24 hours. In 1997, 77 inches of snow may have fallen in Montague, New York, but the observations weren't reliable enough for the record to be certified. The most snowfall ever over an entire season was recorded in 1998 and 1999 at the Mount Baker Ski Area in Washington State. They recorded an incredible total of 1,140 inches, or 95 feet, or just under 30 meters of snow. That's really interesting, but what's responsible for such incredible snowfalls?

All of the areas I've just mentioned have at least one of two things in common. It's either in the mountains or it's near a large body of water. If a location is situated in the mountains, it can be subject to what is known as orographic snow. This tends to happen a lot on the Pacific coast of the United States. Warm moist air will collide into a mountain range where it will be pushed up the side of the the mountain. Once the air goes up the mountain, it faces a drop in temperature, which causes the moist air to precipitate out as snow. I've personally seen just how crazy the snow levels can get in Northern California. Several years ago in late May, I visited some of the national parks in

Northern California, and they still had over 20 feet of snow in some places. The other thing that can cause extreme snowfalls is the lake effect. This is pronounced on the eastern shore, of the Great Lakes. Winds around the latitude of the Great Lakes tend to blow from west to east. As they blow across the lakes, they will pick up warm, moist air. No matter how cold it gets, the Great Lakes are so large that they can't freeze over in the winter. After the wind is picked up the moisture over the lakes, the temperature drops once the air blows over land again, causing the moisture to precipitate out. So where I live, not far from the western shore of Lake Michigan, gets much less snow than everyone on the lower peninsula of Michigan who lives next to the lake.

Likewise, the eastern shore of Lake Erie, which has cities like Buffalo, New York, also can get incredible amounts of snow. One of the big differences between cities is how they handle snowfall. For example, I was in Paris in 1999 when the city had what I would consider to be a light snowfall. However, because the Parisians weren't used to snow, the entire city shut down. I've seen the same thing happen in Hobart, Tasmania, and in Dallas, Texas. A small amount of snow ends up crippling the entire city. Because it snows so infrequently, and usually doesn't last very long on the ground when it does, these places have no equipment or procedures in place for clearing snow.

However, in a major city like Minneapolis, they could potentially handle well over a foot of snow without the city shutting down. That's because they have a fleet of plows that are out clearing the streets the moment it starts snowing. Bridges will often be cleared by large snowblowers that will shoot the snow into a waiting dump truck that will take it away. If you live in an area that doesn't get much snow, the next time you visit a northern city, take a look at their streets. You'll notice that they never have reflectors embedded in the road that stick out. And this is because they would be destroyed by snow plows the first time it snows. I want to close with something that you might have heard about. the fact that the Inuit people of the Far North supposedly have dozens of different words for snow.

This is technically true, but it doesn't mean what people often claim it means. When this fact is mentioned, it's usually in support of the idea that language can shape someone's view of the world. In the case of the Inuit, they live in a snowy region where the snow is a very important part of their lives, so they developed more words to describe nuances in snow. This is technically true, but it's actually saying more about their language than it does about how they view snow. In the Inuit language, when an adjective describes a noun, it makes a new word. In English and in many other languages, it's simply two words. So the Inuit may have separate words for wet snow and dry snow, but we can express the same exact thing.

It's just that we have to use two words to do it. Snow may not seem like something very exciting, but when you consider everything that goes into the creation of a simple snowflake and how it can accumulate on the ground, snow actually has a lot going on. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener Zellumgrann over on Apple Podcasts in the United States.

They write, So great, but I love it. it. I have listened to every single episode twice, but don't do another episode like Soyuz 11. It still haunts me to this day. Well, thanks, Zell-Mung-Gran. Thankfully, there aren't too many incidents like Soyuz 11, so there aren't that many similar episodes that would be possible. That being said, there have been plenty of tragedies throughout history, and many of those stories will eventually be told on this podcast. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read on the show.

Thank you.