Snow

Tomorrow is my last day in snow country, before I head back to the city and less wintery climes. I have truly enjoyed spending the month of January in the Catskills. This morning I walked down to the river with the main purpose of enjoying and photographing the snow in all its different variations. 

I dressed up in my snow pants and thermal socks with two hats and two pairs of gloves for the 15 degrees at 8:00 am and trudged out toward the meadow and down the hill toward to cracking ice. 

I grew up in Boston during the 60s and 70s, so my nostalgia for snow is huge. The blizzards in the winters of 1977, 78 and 79 were record setting and made for epic adventures of being snowed in and whole weeks of snow days.  December of 1977 had 60.7 inches alone. 

They used to say that the Inuit or Yupik cultures of Canada and Alaska had hundreds of words for snow, and they do have many, but that's mostly an urban myth. The culture that does have hundreds of words is Scotland with over 400! The Latin word is nix and if something is niveous it resembles snow. Sposh is soft slushy mud snow - onomatopoetic. The top image is probably névé or graupel, a firm granular snow which is exposed to sun and wind and forms on glaciers and the tops of mountains. Skift is the light drift of snow that falls from a flurry and disappears quickly.

Then there's grue or thin floating ice and snow. A word out of which came gruesome because grue can also be a verb that means shiver or shudder out of cold or fear. 

My favorite are the endless list of terms from the Scottish dialect blin drift, owerblaw, sneachda, clag, tirl, wauff, skirfin, haar-frost, smeuk, and snaw-wreath are just a few. Much appreciation for snow today. We need it because come spring it melts into the reservoirs and feeds the rivers and lakes as well as the earth.