how many words for SNOW?

In "Mother Tongue" Bill Bryson wrote

"The Eskimos, as it is well known, have fifty words for types of snow - though curiously no word for just plain snow"

Today I was thinking about this as I was walking from the bus stop... 

The snow that falls can be big & fluffy or so fine that it simply glitters in the subshine, it can be wet & sloppy or dry & sharp (especially in the cold wind), and once it's on the ground it changes over time - fluffy, settled, compressed, ice, melted, ice crystals as it refreezes, crunchy as it breaks up again, slushy as it melts, just plain wet snow.... and the colours.... white (of course), yellow (avoid that one), brown (avoid that, too!), various shades of grey through to black. I think someone has been dropping red napkins near the school as there are red patches of ice along the pavement...

Of course at this time of year, it is also full of grit. As I walked across the Market Square yesterday it was impossible to tell that it is cobbled. The months of grit left behind as the snow & ice are melting is so deep you cannot tell what the surface beneath might be. The same is true on all the other surfaces, too. It feels odd to walk on solid ground - you can miss the crunch beneath your feet.

as the melt water drains, you can see thelayers beneath your feet

the footpath/pavement is lined with the snow ploughed from the road and the pavement (and the grit therein!)

the surface of the snow is pitted at the snow beneath starts to melt & drain

the strata of snow, ice & grit tracking the winter's progress

on the roadside, the snow is pitted from detritus flung at it by passing cars

this particular pile of ploughed snow is over 5ft high! and you can see from the figure at the top, that it has already melted about  6ins!

I Love Snow!

It's clean, white, fluffy, bright, quiet, gentle and beautiful. And it's not.... 

...in the last few days, after a few months of minus temperatures, regular snowfall and deep snow banks I have noticed a change. The piles of snow along the roadsides, left by the ploughs, are no longer white, or even grey, but black - black snow! Traffic pollution on the busiest roads has left the surface coated.

 (this picture was taken mid Jan when the snow was just grey and not yet black)

The temperature is slowly rising. Yesterday we experienced our first positive temperatures this year, this morning it was as high as 2 degrees centigrade. We even opened the windows to let in some fresh, cool air. Our apartment is so well heated & so well insulated that the indoor temperature can be as high as 26 C, 29 C in the bathroom! Recently our landlord brought in a fancy infrared camera to check for leaks and we discovered that the surface of our kitchen floor is 33 C!! No wonder I need slippers - to prevent my feet from burning, not to keep them warm... the joys of underfloor heating. But I digress...

The low temperatures and regular snowfall since New Year has meant deep snow everywhere including on rooftops. Now that the temperature is rising, the snow is beginning to melt and the heavy snow is falling from the roofs, causing damage to roofs, cars, gardens & of course people. Today, YLE online reported many people hospitalised due to injuries caused by clearing the snow from the roofs - they were up there with shovels trying to prevent damage from uncontrolled, unexpected falls! 30 people in Helsinki alone underwent surgery! 

As I write, J is outside, he has moved the car away from the house - just in case - and is now chipping the ice off the front steps. Although our snow is generally dry & crunchy, it gets compressed quite quickly on regularly used routes and the lowest layers turn to solid ice. As long as the snowfall continues, there is a crunchy layer to walk on but as soon as that goes, either swept away or melted, it reveals the nasty slippery surface below. So, J is there with a garden hoe chipping the ice off the front steps.

Just before the big thaw began (and there's no guarantee it won't all freeze again) we managed to have some fun in the snow. J, Monkey & I spent a few hours one sunny afternoon clearing the previous night's snowfall from the driveway. We swept, scraped and scooped the snow off the steps and off the car and off the paths and up onto the piles around the garden - lining the paths in the same way the as the ploughed snow lines the roadsides. On the busier roads a digger & truck later come along and remove all the piles of snow but on the side streest and cul-de-sacs, like ours, a large bank builds up.

- Monkey is about a metre tall, so you can see how high the bank is!
- She decided to go climbing and as she got over the other side, needed rescuing.....

- of course, then I needed rescuing too! J very helpfully took a picture first...cheeky!

We also went tobogganing in a friends garden - they had prepared a run from the hill beyond the garden, down onto the snow above the lawn (about a foot above!!) and the mothers & babies group along with daddies & older siblings all had a go... even I braved it. I was terrible but Monkey obviously has the knack - leaning well back to streamline herself... maybe she could compete in the 2018 winter Olympic games as the youngest skeleton competitor ever?... ;D