Page "Snow" Paragraph 4

Once on the ground, snow can be categorized as powdery when light and fluffy, fresh when recent but heavier, granular when it begins the cycle of melting and refreezing, and eventually ice once it packs down, after multiple melting and refreezing cycles, into a dense mass called snow pack.

When powdery, snow moves with the wind from the location where it originally landed, forming deposits called snowdrifts which may have a depth of several meters.

After attaching to hillsides, blown snow can evolve into a snow slab, which is an avalanche hazard on steep slopes.

The existence of a snowpack keeps temperatures lower than they would be otherwise, as the whiteness of the snow reflects most sunlight, and any absorbed heat goes into melting the snow rather than increasing its temperature.

The water equivalent of snowfall is measured to monitor how much liquid is available to flood rivers from meltwater which will occur during the following spring.

Snow cover can protect crops from extreme cold.

If snowfall stays on the ground for a series of years uninterrupted, the snowpack develops into a mass of ice called glacier.

Fresh snow absorbs sound, lowering ambient noise over a landscape because the trapped air between snowflakes attenuates vibration.

These acoustic qualities quickly minimize and reverse, once a layer of freezing rain falls on top of snow cover.

Walking across snowfall produces a squeaking sound at low temperatures.