Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Snowfall |
SnowfallNoun1. Precipitation falling from clouds in the form of ice crystals. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "snowfall" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1885. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Geography | The amount of snow, hail, sleet, or other precipitation occurring in solid form which reaches the earth's surface. It may be expressed in millimetres(inches)depth as it falls, orin terms of millimetres(inches)depth of the equivalent amount of water. Source: European Union. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
For other use, see snow (disambiguation).
Snow, a form of precipitation, is a crystalline form of water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes. Since it is composed of small rough particles, it has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure. It is commonly formed when water vapor sublimates high in the atmosphere and then falls to the ground. Very light snow falling is called flurries or just a flurry.
Snow can be also manufactured using snow cannons, which actually create tiny granules more like sleet. (This is sometimes called "grits" by those in the southern U.S for its likeness to the texture of the food.)
Snowfall varies by time and location, including geographic latitude, elevation and other factors which affect weather in general. In Southern latitudes, there is less chance of snow fall. Some mountains, even at or near the equator, have permanent snow cover on their top, including Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Conversely, many regions of the Arctic and Antarctic receive very little precipitation and therefore little snow, despite the bitter cold.
Substantial snowfall sometimes disrupts infrastructure and services even in regions that are accustomed to them. Traffic may be snarled or even completely stop. Basic infrastructure such as electricity and gap supply can be shut down. A snow day is a day on which school or other services are cancelled owing to unusually heavy snowfall. In areas that normally have very little snow, this may occur even with light accumulation — something often made fun of by those people used to colder climates, where streets would remain passable given the same amount of snow.
Forms of recreation depending on snow:
Where snow is scarce but the temperature is low enough, snow cannons may be used to produce an adequate amount for such sports.
- many winter sports, such as skiing and snowboarding
- playing with a sled or riding in a sleigh
- building a snowman or snow fort
- throwing snowballs mutually in a snowball fight or at others to tease them.
Tightly packed snow may be used as a construction material in, for example, Inuit snow houses.
The concept that no two snowflakes are alike is incorrect: in a volume of snow two feet square by ten inches deep there are roughly one million flakes, and so statistically many snowflakes must be visually identical. The American Meteorological Society has reported that matching snow crystals were discovered by Nancy Knight of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The crystals were not flakes in the usual sense but rather hollow hexagonal prisms.
See also
- avalanche
- sleigh
- skiing
- snowboard
- snow cannon
- frost
- snowshoe
- igloo
External Links
- National Science Digital Library - Snowflake
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Snow."
Synonym: SnowfallSynonym: snow (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: Snowfall |
| English words defined with "snowfall": blizzard ♦ flurry ♦ snow flurry, snowshoe, snowstorm. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "snowfall": annual snowline ♦ firn limit ♦ ice and snow-albedo-temperature feedback ♦ snow bin, snowbin, Snowboard, Snowfall Rate, SNOWMAKER ♦ Termination Dust. (references) |
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Sunrise at Yaquina Head lighthouse after a snowfall. Credit: Michael Noack. |  | Birch grove, after snowfall on September 29, near Galalino, Russia. Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540. |
 | Bird's-eye view of Hartford, Connecticut, from Capitol, after snowfall. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Bridge weighted down by heavy snowfall in Berlin, New Hampshire. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
 |  |
| "First Snow 01" by Jason Krieger Commentary: "We finally got our first snowfall of the season here in the chicago area and I couldnt help but to take some pictures..... more available at stock.kriegsnet.com ..." | "Snowy Farm 1" by Paige Foster Commentary: "A pretty little far just a couple of miles from where I live. I loved the fruit trees, and the way it looked with the first snowfall of the year just lightly dusting it." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Japan | Sapporo, on the northern island, has warm summers and long, cold winters with heavy snowfall. (references) |
Japan | Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe, on the western part of the largest island of Honshu, experience relatively mild winters with little or no snowfall and hot, humid summers. (references) | |
Pakistan | The primary short-term reasons for the current acute irrigation shortage are two consecutive weak monsoons and inadequate glacier and snow melt due to below normal snowfall and cooler than normal temperatures. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Snowfall" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Snowfall" is used about 36 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 36 | 57,479 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expression using "snowfall": day of snowfall. Additional references. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
snowfall | 44 |
average snowfall | 8 |
annual snowfall | 7 |
screensaver snowfall | 5 |
first snowfall | 4 |
record snowfall | 4 |
first poem snowfall | 4 |
picture snowfall | 4 |
estate real snowfall | 3 |
annual average snowfall | 3 |
artificial snowfall | 3 |
snowfall amount | 2 |
colorado snowfall | 2 |
simulation snowfall | 2 |
minnesota snowfall | 2 |
free screensaver snowfall | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "snowfall"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | reshje bore. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | снеговалеж (fall of snow, snow). (various references) | |
Chinese | 降雪. (various references) | |
Czech | snìžení (snow), napadlý sníh. (various references) | |
Danish | snefald. (various references) | |
Dutch | sneeuwval. (various references) | |
Finnish | lumisade (fall of snow), lumentulo. (various references) | |
French | chute de neige. (various references) | |
German | Schneefall (fall of snow, snow). (various references) | |
Greek | πτώση χιόνοσ, υετός υπό στερεάν μορφήν, χιόνισμα, χιονόπτωση. (various references) | |
Hebrew | מפולת שלג (avalanche), ירידת שלג, שליגה, שלגון (avalanche, ice lolly, icecream bar, water ice). (various references) | |
Hungarian | hóesés (fall of snow). (various references) | |
Italian | precipitazione solida, nevicata (snow), nevata. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 降雪 (snow), 降雪 (snow), 降り (rainfall), 雪降り , 積雪量 . (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ふり (appearance, disadvantage, drawback, handicap, inseparability, irrational, pretence, rainfall, show, unfavorable, unreasonable), せきせつりょう, こうせつ (explanation, gossip, public, sexual intercourse, skill, snow, tact, talk about town, workmanship, your opinion), ゆきふり. (various references) | |
Korean | 강설. (various references) | |
Manx | ceau niaghtee. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | owfallsnay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | queda de neve (fall of snow), nevasca (drift, fall of snow, snow, snowstorm, squall), nevada. (various references) | |
Russian | снегопад (fall of snow, scurry, snow-fall). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | padanje snega. (various references) | |
Spanish | nevada (nev., Nevada, nv, shower, snowstorm). (various references) | |
Swedish | snöfall (fall of snow). (various references) | |
Turkish | yağış miktarı (rainfall), kar yağışı miktarı, kar yağışı (fall of snow, snows). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | снігопад (snow), кількість опадів у вигляді снігу. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "snowfall": snowfalls. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-f-l-l-n-o-s-w" | |
-1 letter: fallows. | |
-2 letters: allows, fallow, llanos, sallow. | |
-3 letters: allow, awols, falls, fanos, fawns, flans, flaws, flown, flows, foals, fowls, lawns, llano, loafs, loans, ollas, salol, salon, solan, walls, wolfs. | |
-4 letters: alls, alow, also, awls, awns, awol, fall, fano, fans, fawn, flan, flaw, flow, foal, fons, fowl, lawn, laws, loaf, loan, lown, lows, naos, nows, oafs. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-f-l-l-n-o-s-w" | |
+1 letter: downfalls, snowfalls. | |
+2 letters: fallowness. | |
+4 letters: fallownesses. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Images: Digital Art 8. Quotations: Non-fiction | 9. Usage Frequency 10. Expressions 11. Expressions: Internet 12. Translations: Modern | 13. Derivations 14. Anagrams 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
