by FerrousToast » Fri Feb 26, 2016 8:16 pm
I'm from canada, let me give this a try. when it's really cold, snow is like really light sand. it blows in the wind and it piles in dunes, just like in deserts. when it gets warmer, the snow gets wetter, because there is more unfrozen moisture in general, and it gets heavier, and weighing down on itself makes it more compact, until it forms into blocks of what we call "black ice" because it's not simply frozen water, it's compacted and polished snow, which makes it invisible rather than opaque against the white snow. when you play with it in your hands, it feels like tiny cold lacy fibers, really soft but at the same time hard, and incredibly delicate. when you compress it together into a snowball, it's much like a fistful of dry mash potatoes, sort of hard, very heavy and dense, and when it hits someone or something, it's gonna break apart and stick to everything. for making snowmen and good snowballs, you want your snow to be a little moist, cause that makes it compact together much better, where as if you have the super cold soft light drifty snow, it won't compact and stick to itself because it's just to soft and you are only crushing the delicate strands rather than tangling them together.
It's a lot like sticky wet sand that will never be fully dry, because it is actually made of wet.
