Snow Much Fun!

You wouldn’t be shocked to see snow on the ground of Siberia or Minnesota when traveling to those places during the winter months. But northern areas don’t have a monopoly on snowfall—the white stuff has been known to touch down everywhere from the Sahara Desert to Hawaii. Even the driest place on Earth isn’t immune. In 2011, the Atacama Desert in Chile received nearly 32 inches of snow thanks to a rare cold front from Antarctica

A LITTLE WATER CAN ADD UP TO A LOT OF SNOW

The air doesn’t need to be super moist to produce impressive amounts of snow. Unlike plain rainfall, a bank of fluffy snow contains lots of air that adds to its bulk. That’s why what would have been an inch of rain in the summer equals about 10 inches of snow in the colder months.

THE EARTH IS CLOSEST TO THE SUN DURING THE WINTER.

Every January (the start of the winter season in the northern hemisphere) the Earth reaches the point in its orbit that’s nearest to the Sun. Despite some common misconceptions, the seasonal drop in temperature has nothing to do with the distance of our planet to the Sun. It instead has everything to do with which direction the Earth’s axis is tilting, which is why the two hemispheres experience winter at different times of the year.

COLDEST TEMPERATURE RECORDEDIN WINTER

The coldest temperature ever recorded during a UK winter was -27.2 °C which was recorded in the village of Braemar in the Scottish Highlands.

The same temperature has been recorded twice, first on 11 February 1895 and again on 10 January 1982.

NO HEAT

The Mall of America has no central heating system. All the heat is generated by people, lighting, and skylights. They even have to run the air conditioner during the cold winter months just to keep the mall comfortable. –

SNOW IN HELL

There is a town in Norway called Hell, and it freezes over almost every winter.

SNOW BOMBING

Russia has to bomb their rivers every winter to prevent dangerous flooding caused by ice dams.