But there’s no snow in Key West, Florida.Yes, it does snow in Florida! In addition to the Jacksonville snowfall mentioned above, it has snowed as far south as Miami – a place that saw the white stuff fall from the sky in 1977.However, the claim was never corroborated. The largest snowflake on record was 15 inches wide and fell in Montana in 1887.But one scientist found 2 identical snowflakes in 1988 from a Wisconsin snowstorm. It’s said that all snowflakes are unique.It’s translucent (or see-through). It most often appears white because snowflakes have a plethora of tiny surfaces that scatter white light - depending on the depth of the snow, the direction of the sunlight, and the presence of shadows. In addition to snowflakes, other forms of snow include graupel and sleet.For a snowstorm to be officially categorized as a blizzard, winds must be at least 35 miles per hour and snowfall must be heavy enough to reduce visibility to no more than a quarter mile for at least 3 hours.An amazing 63 inches of snow fell on Decemin Georgetown, Colorado - creating the record for the most snowfall on a single calendar day.The most snowfall recorded in a 24-hour period in the United States was in 1921, when 75.8 inches fell in Silver Lake, Colorado.On average, at least 1 septillion (trillion trillion!) snowflakes and other particles of icy precipitation fall in a given winter.Heaps! Here are 10 more cool facts about snow that will blow you away: Okay, so science explains how it can snow above 32 degrees.īut what else is there to know about snow? These include areas in the immediate vicinity of factories, mines, and caves. Two special ingredients are mixed with the water to help soil retain moisture and allow plants to grow. Other localized pockets of warmth – There are any number of other situations where the layer of above-freezing surface temperatures may be very thin yet temperatures a few hundred feet up are below 32 degrees. This is especially helpful in times of winter drought.So, while it may be 40 or 45 degrees at the street level in a large city, it might be 30 degrees just 1,500 feet up – a scenario in which it could snow above freezing. Those are places where asphalt, concrete, and other manmade materials absorb rather than reflect heat and create a thin layer of ambient warmth very close to the surface. Big cities – Dense urban areas create so-called heat islands.While the shoreline might be in the high 30s, the temperatures just a thousand feet up may be at or well below 32 degrees. Areas near water – Bodies of water can help moderate nearby surface temperatures.At or below 32°, it will remain frozen.Ĭonditions like that are most often found in these locations: If the air temperature is above 32☏, snow and ice will start to melt. Snow can form as long as there’s enough moisture in the atmosphere where temperatures are at or below freezing.Īs the snow falls through warmer segments of the atmosphere, it begins melting into rain.

So while it may be, say, 40 degrees at ground level, it could be closer to 10 degrees just 5,000 feet up. The air temperature decreases by about 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit every 1,000 feet in altitude through adiabatic cooling. Generally, it is many degrees cooler in the levels of the atmosphere where snow forms than it is at the ground level. But it DOES NOT have to be freezing at the surface for snow to hit the ground.Yes, it DOES have to be 32 degrees or colder for snow to form.This phenomenon is likely to increase in occurrence with a changing climate.So, how can it be that frozen precipitation such as snow flakes and flurries could fall when it’s above 32 degrees at the ground level? The Science Behind The Temperature For Snow That the behaviour of the internal boundary layers can be highly variable is demonstrated through four case studies. At the snow surface downwind of the water, the conditions were highly variable and all the fluxes were, on average, of very small magnitude. Over the water however, the internal boundary layer that was formed gave on average an increased vertical gradient in wind speed, temperature, and humidity and turbulent heat fluxes exceeding 400 W m −2. At the snow site upwind of the water, the stability was generally stable, the momentum flux small, and the sensible heat flux positive. The turbulent fluxes of momentum, sensible and latent heat were measured at three locations with a snow-water-snow fetch. From observations in a High Arctic valley and ice-free fjord in Svalbard during March and April 2013 we show that, while some caution needs to be applied, ordinary slow-response instruments placed over a snow-water-snow surface can be effectively used as a proxy for more sophisticated measuring techniques at complex sites such as leads or a polynyas.

Snow wager times