Questions tagged [snow]

Snow consists of fine ice crystals and is the most common form of solid precipitation.

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Have snowflakes (or chained snowflakes) really been documented in sizes as 'large as milk pans'?

On the night of 27 January 1887, a fierce winter storm dropped snowflakes described as "larger than milk pans" over the Clark Fork River valley, in the vicinity of a ranch owned by Matt ...
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colder after snow

I had a physics professor that said that it becomes colder after snow because heat from the air is absorbed by the snow as it melts. This makes sense to me in that the snow should lower the ...
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Shouldn't the permanent snow line be considerably higher in the Alps and on Mt Hood if temperature falls 6.5°C per 1000 meters?

The permanent snow line in the Alps is around 10,000 ft (3,000 m) elevation. This was further confirmed by a passenger flight I took late June where the screen showed 0°C (freeze point) around 10,000 ...
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Do snow gustnadoes or anything similar occur at or near the summits of the highest Himalayas such as Mt Everest?

A gustnado is a landspout (i.e. a "mini-tornado") that isn't connected to the ambient cloud base (if there is any). Mt Everest, the highest point on Earth, there is nothing "in the way&...
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What is 0 degree isotherm and how to calculate it?

I want to look at different areas of alpine glaciers and understand the position of 0 degree isotherm to do a comparative climate analysis. Given the mean annual air temperature and altitude, how do i ...
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How do you determine the % of precipitation falling as snow in the case below?

I have just started a course in hydrology (a totally different field from mine which is computer science) and I can't find the link between the fact that a river flows into a lake and the % of ...
narutoArea51's user avatar
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Obtaining ELA from AAR method

I am trying to understand how to obtain ELA using Accumulation area ratio method. My understanding is: Accumulation area/ ablation area is assumed to be constant. Empirical data of long term annual ...
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Simulating snow melt inundation in urban areas

I am trying to understand how melt water from snow in urban setting gets routed. I understand that for routing rain water, one can create grid and then determine the flow direction for each cell by ...
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Differences between lake effect and ocean effect snow

What are the differences between the conditions that lead to lake effect snow versus ocean effect snowfall? Both can lead to significant snowfall, but usually lake effect causes large snow amounts.
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Daily data for snow water equivalent (not including rain)

Do you know a way to find daily snow water equivalent data, for just snow and not any rain that may have fallen same day? Backstory: Hi, I'm pretty new to all this. I work for a small city that wants ...
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Why is the snow line higher in the Himalayas than on the equator?

Excerpt from WP page Snow line: "At or near the equator, it is typically situated at approximately 4,500 metres (14,764 ft) above sea level. As one moves towards the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic ...
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Snow on a relatively warm day

Outside my window it's snowing. This isn't so strange, even for the South of England in mid-April. What is surprising is that the ambient air temperatures (according to the Met-Office) are about 7 or ...
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Why does Japan get so much snow?

Japan seems to get a surprising amount of snow in winter, compared to other places that are as cold or colder. The snow seems to be concentrated on the west side of the country, which suggests the ...
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Where to find reliable snowfall rate data?

Would you please let me know where I can find/download reliable snowfall rate datasets? I am looking for multiple weather stations (in different regions) or field measured data, that contain both ...
Alireza Amani's user avatar
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How does salting roads help prevent ice?

What kind of salt is used to keep roads from getting icy and how does it work? Why does ice get thick in some places and other nearby places there is no ice?
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Looking for info on a very heavy snow that fell in Airdrie AB in May of about 1992

I have been looking on the internet and can't find the title subject. Three friends and I spent 2 days snowed in a strangers house in Airdrie AB during May , about 1992. We are talking about close to ...
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What is the name of this landform?

These are from the movie Insomnia. Also available in this video from 4 seconds to 8 seconds. What is the name of this landform? Are these just snow on Lapies? or These are some form of glaciated ...
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Average Snowfall for Snowy Places?

I just moved to Wisconsin, so my family is throwing snow statistics at me. But it seems to me that the most meaningful average US snowfall statistic isn't available (or easy to find). The average ...
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Snowmelt erosion in USLE?

Is there any way to compute snow-melt erosion with Universal Soil Loss Equation? How can I change rainfall erosivity factor to snow-melt erosivity?
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How high could snow form on a mountain?

I was reminded recently of a moment in the Eragon books where the main characters see a "tall" mountain range, and then after a minute realize that the white sky stretching up above them is just ...
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Where can I find a list of snow fall recording stations in my zip code?

Where can I find the locations on snow fall recording stations in a particular United States county or zip code? Is there a way that I can find an hour by hour recent history of snow fall? Hour by ...
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How to extract lat-lon from MOD10C2 hdf data in matlab?

We can import and read all given bands/parameters of MOD10C2, lat and lon is not given as separate band rather embedded with other bands. How we can extract from MOD10C2 hdf data in matlab. Similar ...
irfan's user avatar
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How to figure the MODIS snow cover against different elevation zones?

I am working on MOD10C2 (8days snow cover), when I clip the MODIS snow cover against different zones of elevation the results was against general trend .i.e. the higher elevation was showing lower ...
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Why is not snow melting in Ladakh at a rapid pace

I am a novice and thus would like you not to mind too much if the answer to my question seems "obvious" to you. I heard that in the cold desert of Ladakh, if you keep your face in sunlight and legs ...
Harsh Sharma's user avatar
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Which software is easiest to use to create plots like these? [closed]

There seems to be many options for a single problem, but each with different approaches and complications, and that makes is confusing and time consuming for this beginner to work out which to use. I'...
irfan's user avatar
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9 votes
1 answer
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How much of arctic ice is from snow fall versus frozen sea water?

How much of arctic ice is from snow fall versus frozen sea water? I presume arctic ice comes from both sources. Is there a way to tell how the ice was formed? In other words, if you made a core ...
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Is there a maximum size for a single snowflake?

Just based on my previous experiences a wetter snow, in general, has larger flakes. Some online sources say that raindrops do have a maximum size before they start to break apart when surface tension ...
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How to calculate the snow cover area from satellite data in better and efficient way?

Satellite retrievals contain cloud cover, biases e.t.c which is the main challenge to prepare the data for further analysis. After all, how we can efficiently calculate the snow cover and its ...
irfan's user avatar
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What is the better way to deal the missing and negative cells of satellite snow cover data

Daily and monthly MODIS snow cover L3 data has downloaded, next to deal with missing and negative cells. Different types of interpolation are being used to fill the missing cells. I want to fill the ...
irfan's user avatar
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Snow under Siberian High

The Siberian High is a very strong anticyclone present over Siberia in the winter. Cities like Irkutsk lie at its very center, yet Irkutsk has 18-20 days of snow per month in the winter. Shouldn't we ...
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Does the snow come from local moisture or transported moisture?

Currently there is a snow storm coming from Europe over the UK. This is drastically dropping the temperature and making it snow lots. Is the snow coming from moisture that has been brought over from ...
Richard Parnaby-King's user avatar
3 votes
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How can snow be falling with consistent above freezing temperatures? [duplicate]

I'm a keen skier, and I've often been happily surprised by snow fall despite temperatures of 1 or even 2 °C. After some research I found that the explanation relies in assuming that these above ...
Pedro's user avatar
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Can I use radar data to estimate snowfall, or is there a better way?

The problem: There are lots of websites that provide snow forecasts for various ski resorts. The area of interest to me is Japan, specifically the Nagano area, where I use snow-forecast.com and www....
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Missing Data in GSOD Data

I been accessing daily historical NOAA GSOD data through Google BigQuery. I am interested in long term time series of snow, precipitation, and to a lesser extent temperature for areas around the Volga ...
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'River-effect' snow

Earlier this year 'river-effect' snow was reported in the Quad Cities (Western Illinois) along the Mississippi River. Per the local news report: According to Andy Ervin, a Meteorologist with the ...
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5 votes
2 answers
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Is there a minimum snow depth to be considered as presence of snow?

I want to create a variable "snow cover" with values presence/absence of snow for different weather stations (to work later with NDSI from Landsat images with a pixel size = 100 m). I got snow depth ...
MSS's user avatar
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Antarctica Exploration [closed]

Which parts of Antarctica are unexplored? What about the underwater world of Antarctica? Specifically, what information do we have about it? What is so interesting about exploring Antarctica when ...
Coto's user avatar
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How to handle leap years when working with environmental conditions time series?

I have a time series of snow and temperature and I want to analyze changes over time for a specific period of time: 15 April - 15 June. In the perpetual calendar April 15 is the day 105 and in a leap ...
MSS's user avatar
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3 answers
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Is snow less likely to appear at a coastal area?

Is it true that a coastal area is less likely to see snow compared with inland area nearby? If so, what are the reasons?
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What's the difference between snow cover and fractional snow cover?

What's the difference between snow cover and fractional snow cover? Are they kind of synonyms? What would be a definition of fractional snow cover? thanks a lot!
MSS's user avatar
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Effect of snow on BVOC emmisions of plants/trees

Plants re-emit a substantial fraction of their assimilated carbon into the atmosphere as Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds (BVOCs) that affect the chemical and physical properties of the atmosphere. ...
Dark_Knight's user avatar
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calculation of coefficients for snow melt DDF

How can I obtain coefficients for Degree-Day Factor method estimating snowmelt rate? Any reference would be appreciated.
UserRR's user avatar
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Phase conversion of snow and ice due to irradiation versus melting

A few years ago another question touched on the relative rates of sublimation versus melting in terms of snow and snow pack disappearance. What was unusual about the answer is the huge range of ...
Tyler Durden's user avatar
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Had the climatologists predicted climate change as the deviations to both extremely cold and hot temperatures before?

Recently I read that the current extreme snowfall in northern temperate climate is caused by the increased evaporation due to the global warming. Had any scientist predicted these extremes before ...
Probably's user avatar
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9 votes
4 answers
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Temperature rise when snowing

Why does the temperature rise when it is snowing? Is it due to: cloud cover snow requires humid air and warmer air can carry more humidity (so in this case it would be the other way around, i.e. it ...
user1583209's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
53 views

What kind of storm tracks produce snow in the eastern United States?

What storm tracks are favorable for snow in the eastern United States? Articles like this one on a winter storm in the Northeast in 2011 indicate that storm tracks are important in snowfall amounts. ...
Bibliophile's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
170 views

Snow thunderstorms

So why are snow thunderstorms so rare? I researched a bit and it said that it is because there is less moisture in the air. But the percentage of thunderstorms while raining seems much higher than the ...
Clangorous Chimera's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
92 views

snow modelling using raster data with different resolution

I am trying model to some snow processes for the whole US. I do have daily climate forcing time series for a 1 x 1 km raster in a Lambert Conformal Conic Projection (netCdf format). The MODIS snow ...
user3804227's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
367 views

Why can't radar's decibel scale be used to determine the intensity of snowfall?

According to the FAA's Aviation Weather Services advisory circular, Values below 15 dBZ are typically associated with clouds. However, they may also be caused by atmospheric particulate matter ...
Ryan Mortensen's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
2k views

Why snow is white?

Snow is precipitation in the form of flakes of crystalline water ice that falls from clouds. Why is it not another colour?
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