Walking With Snow

I have heard it said that arctic natives have a large number of words for snow, each describing a particular kind of snow. Until this year, I had little idea of how many nuances of snow there were.

We are still on the fifth round of snow, which began in early January. An inch one day was covered by another inch a few days later, covered by four more, then four more.Rain turned ten inches of dry, fluffy snow to six inches of wet snow over two inches of slush. The rain turned to snow, dumping another five inches of dry fluffy on top of that. A warm spell melted the top layer of that, then a deep freeze created a crust that was very thin in some places and able to support the weight of a bassador in other places.

Tuesday morning we woke up to a horrendous storm that dumped another eight inches of dry fluffy snow on top of crust of varying thicknesses on top of six inches of dry snow on top of six inches of crusty snow, on top of two inches of ice. Thursday and Friday it rained. Now we have pretty much every kind except dry and fluffy.

Every time Grace leaps into the white stuff beside the sidewalk, she lands in something different.

I wonder how many words she has for snow.