Snow Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about snow

Snow Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is snow?
A: Snow refers to forms of ice crystals that precipitate from the atmosphere (usually from clouds) and undergo changes on the Earth's surface.

Snowflakes take on a variety of shapes, basic among these are what?
A: Platelets, needles, columns and rime.

As snow accumulates into a snow pack, it may blow into what?
A: Drifts.

Where the climate is cold enough for year-to-year accumulation, what may form?
A: a glacier.

The physics of snow crystal development in clouds results from a complex set of variables that include what?
A: Moisture content and temperatures.

The resulting shapes of the falling and fallen crystals can be classified into a number of what?
A: Basic shapes and combinations, thereof.

Occasionally, some plate-like, dendritic and stellar-shaped snowflakes can form under what?
A: A clear sky with a very cold temperature inversion present.

Snow clouds usually occur in the context of what?
A: Larger weather systems, the most important of which is the low pressure area, which typically incorporate warm and cold fronts as part of their circulation.

What are two additional and locally productive sources of snow?
A: Lake-effect (also sea-effect) storms and elevation effects, especially in mountains.

Mid-latitude cyclones are what?
A: Low pressure areas which are capable of producing anything from cloudiness and mild snow storms to heavy blizzards.

In the Northern Hemisphere, which side of the low pressure area produces the most snow?
A: The northern side.

For the southern mid-latitudes, the side of a cyclone that produces the most snow is what?
A: The southern side.

A cold front can produce frontal what?
A: Snowsqualls—an intense frontal convective line (similar to a rainband), when temperature is near freezing at the surface.

The strong convection that develops has enough moisture to produce what conditions?
A: Whiteout conditions at places which line passes over as the wind causes intense blowing snow.

This type of snowsquall generally lasts how long?
A: Less than 30 minutes at any point along its path but the motion of the line can cover large distances.

Frontal squalls may form a short distance ahead of the surface cold front or behind the cold front where there may be a what?
A: A deepening low pressure system or a series of trough lines which act similar to a traditional cold frontal passage.

In situations where squalls develop post-frontally it is not unusual to have two or three linear squall bands pass in rapid succession only separated by about how far?
A: 25 miles (40 kilometers) with each passing the same point in roughly 30 minutes apart.

In cases where there is a large amount of vertical growth and mixing the squall may develop embedded what?
A: Cumulonimbus clouds resulting in lightning and thunder which is dubbed thundersnow.

Lake-effect snow is produced during cooler atmospheric conditions when a cold air mass does what?
A: Moves across long expanses of warmer lake water, warming the lower layer of air which picks up water vapor from the lake, rises up through the colder air above, freezes and is deposited on the leeward (downwind) shores.

The same effect also occurs over bodies of what?
A: Salt water, when it is termed ocean-effect or bay-effect snow.

The effect is enhanced when the moving air mass is uplifted by what?
A: The orographic influence of higher elevations on the downwind shores.

This uplifting can produce narrow but very intense bands of precipitation, which deposit at what rate?
A: Many inches of snow each hour, often resulting in a large amount of total snowfall.

The areas affected by lake-effect snow are called what?
A: Snowbelts.

Orographic or relief snowfall is caused when masses of air pushed by wind are what?
A: Forced up the side of elevated land formations, such as large mountains.

The lifting of air up the side of a mountain or range results in what?
A: Adiabatic cooling, and ultimately condensation and precipitation.

Moisture is removed by orographic lift, leaving drier, warmer air on what?
A: The descending, leeward side.

A snowflake consists of roughly how many water molecules?
A: 1019.

Snowflakes vary among themselves, while following what?
A: Similar patterns.

Snow crystals form when tiny “what” freeze?
A: Supercooled cloud droplets (about 10 μm in diameter).

Why are these droplets able to remain liquid at temperatures lower than −18 °C (0 °F)?
A: Because to freeze, a few molecules in the droplet need to get together by chance to form an arrangement similar to that in an ice lattice.

Then the droplet does what?
A: It freezes around this "nucleus".

In warmer clouds an aerosol particle or "ice nucleus" must be present in (or in contact with) the droplet to act as a what?
A: A nucleus.
Clays, desert dust and biological particles can be what?
A: Nuclei.

Artificial nuclei include what?
A: Particles of silver iodide and dry ice, and these are used to stimulate precipitation in cloud seeding.

Crystals formed in supersaturated air trend more towards what type of flake?
A: Lacy, delicate and ornate.

Snow flurry, snow storm and blizzard describe snow events of progressively what?
A: Progressively greater duration and intensity.

In the United States, a blizzard occurs when what two conditions are met for a period of three hours or more?
A: A sustained wind or frequent gusts to 35 miles per hour (56 km/h), and sufficient snow in the air to reduce visibility to less than 0.4 kilometers (0.25 mi).

While heavy snowfall often occurs during blizzard conditions, falling snow is not what?
A: A requirement, as blowing snow can create a ground blizzard.

Glaciers with their permanent snowpacks cover about what percentage of the earth's surface?
A: 10%.

What percentage is covered by seasonal snow?
A: Seasonal snow covers about nine percent, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, where seasonal snow covers about 40 million square kilometres (15×106 sq mi), according to a 1987 estimate.

The world record for the highest seasonal total snowfall was measured where?
A: In the United States at Mt. Baker Ski Area, outside of the city of Bellingham, Washington during the 1998–1999 season.

Mount Baker received 2,896 cm (95.01 ft) of snow, thus surpassing the previous record holder, Mount Rainier, Washington, which during the 1971–1972 season received how much?
A: 2,850 cm (93.5 ft) of snow.

The world record for the highest average annual snowfall is 1,764 cm (57.87 ft), measured where?
A: In Sukayu Onsen, Japan for the period of 1981–2010.

According to Guinness World Records, the world's largest snowflake fell in January 1887 outside where?
A: Present-day Miles City, Montana.

How big was it?
A: It measured 38 cm (15 in) in diameter.

After deposition, snow progresses on one of two paths that determine its fate, either ablation (mostly by melting) or transitioning from firn (multi-year snow) into what?
A: Glacier ice.

During this transition, snow "is a highly porous, sintered material made up of what?
A: A continuous ice structure and a continuously connected pore space, forming together the snow microstructure".

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

An avalanche (also called a snowslide or snowslip) is a what?
A: A rapid flow of snow down a sloping surface.

In the late 20th century, an estimated $2 billion was spent annually in North America on what?
A: Roadway winter maintenance, owing to snow and other winter weather events, according to a 1994 report by Kuemmel.

The dominant effect of snow on vehicle contact with the road is what?
A: Diminished friction.

This can be improved with the use of what?
A: Snow tires, which have a tread designed to compact snow in a manner that enhances traction.