Snow

Snow

Snow is a form of precipitation in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure. Snowflakes come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Types which fall in the form of a ball due to melting and refreezing, rather than a flake, are known as graupel, ice pellets or snow grains. Snowfall amount and its related liquid equivalent precipitation amount are determined using a variety of different rain gauges.

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Famous quotes containing the word snow:

    What is last year’s snow to me,
    Last year’s anything? The tree
    Budding yearly must forget
    How its past arose or set—
    Countee Cullen (1903–1946)

    Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
    The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
    Edward Thomas (1878–1917)

    Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)