Names for Snow

 Standing under the eaves last night, I watched the snow fall as light as mist through the forest. Without the deck light, I couldn't have seen it. Snow-mist, a thing so intangible it's almost a dream.

    Yesterday, during a Zoom meeting, I watched the snow outside the window—nudged off a limb or just giving a sigh and falling off—twinkling and sparkling in the sun's dim rays as it fell. Fairy-dust snow.

Fairy-dust snow just barely caught by the camera
in time, at bottom left

    Snow of enormous flakes, in my nomenclature, are called Thor's tears. 

    Snow that glows ice-blue in its depths—one of the most beautiful colors in nature—should also have a mystical name. Chione snow, maybe, after the Greek goddess of snow, whose father was, sensibly enough, Boreas, the god of the north wind and winter.

    Powder is the kind of snow that clouds up around you with a magnificent puff when you fall in it—the softest, whitest, purest, most beloved of all snows.

    Snow that has frozen pellets of rain on top of it is popcorn snow.

    Snow that has frozen in the night after a daytime thaw is just plain ice.

    Snow that is too soft and too wet and sticks to your skis like glued-on glomps—ogre snow.

    Snow that has lost all integrity is called slush.

    Slush is horrible to ski in. Ice is horrible—too slick, no purchase for either the skis or the poles, hard when you fall on it. Powder is good, popcorn is good. Perfect snow is silky-smooth new snow over a deep base. 

    Not today, not this week or the next, but if the snow remains, and is neither ice nor slush nor ogre snow, I might still have a chance for a good day's skiing when my foot heals. I will hope for powder or popcorn or perfect snow, with some fairy-dust snow falling through the trees as I ski. In the meantime, I will enjoy the fairy-dust snow and the snow-mist of these late winter days.