Snow

Those who live in the high Arctic have, it is said, many words for snow. For a good description of that -- much better than I could give -- read "Smilla's Sense of Snow" by Peter Hoeg, an excellent book that is a thriller, a character study of a young woman from Greenland living in Denmark, and a sociological study of Greenlanders and Danes.

Here in Iowa we have fewer words for snow, but we do have a number of different kinds of it. At the moment the snow that is falling is almost a frozen mist, with tiny, drifting crystals. (I cleaned off our sidewalk this afternoon with a broom instead of a snow shovel.) Earlier today we had big, fat dry flakes; when it's warmer we get big, fat wet flakes. We get light, grainy, dry snow that drifts easily in the wind. We get snow that you can make snowballs and snow forts out of; we get snow that will not form into snowballs unless you make them bare-handed and your hands' heat melts them enough to stick together. But snow is not really a negative; you can drive on snowy streets and walk on snowy sidewalks and sled down snowy hills. No, it's when you have ice below the snow that things get tough, or when you get sleet or raindrops with sleet in them, or getting freezing rain and the dreaded "wintry mix". We have very little of that for now and are just enjoying being warm and dry.