Yes!I have seen that as well, although not with snow. Rain that falls, but does not hit ground. What does Virga mean? It’s a great term!
I think it’s from Latin meaning rod or stripe, presumably a reference to how the falling and evaporating rain looks from a distance.
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And power lines! I was just on the N edge of the 1998 ice storm - ice 5 - 10 mm on everything. I missed the worst of it, but people further south and east were without power for weeks. I’ve often wondered how the non-human life coped with it. Or did not.
Thank you. I’m genuinely interested in how others ‘grade’ their weather. There are large categories, but subtle differences between ‘misty’ and ‘real rain’! We often think of other places in black and white - rain or no rain, but for locals, there are degrees between the two states.
is a condition that develops in spring when the snowpack turns isothermal and the surface grains are melting during the day and refreezing at night. It’s the opposite of facets.
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Graupel and corn snow are not the same. Graupel falls from the ski in that condition. “Graupel are soft, small pellets formed when supercooled water droplets (at a temperature below 32°F) freeze onto a snow crystal, a process called riming. … Graupel is also called snow pellets or soft hail, as the graupel particles are particularly fragile and generally disintegrate when handled.” Corn snow is something that happens to snow that is already on the ground as it melts and re-freezes.
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I’m not sure anyone has mentioned “slush” or partially melted snow.
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NO! Forgot that.
That is right about differently sounding snow. In Lithuanian we use two words: equivalent for squeak when it is cold and equivalent to slurp wnen it is slightly above zero. And it is sometimes said about sparkling snow that it is witch’s fat that sparkles, refering to a folk fairy tale.
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What are the words you use for those?
Once or twice we have had graupel in Cape Town. As lifetime event as the twice I saw snow on Table Mountain.
Our summer wind is the Southeaster. A black Southeaster, dark clouds resting on the mountain, blows wet (from my mother’s Cornish childhood). Not exactly rain.
Lenticular clouds. I am disconcerted to see ‘new types of cloud invented / discovered’
Our equivalent to California’s Santa Ana, or Switzerland’s Foehn is the berg wind. Berg because the air drops down to the coast from inland mountains and plateau (and a geography lesson about air warming as it comes down) … then we get our promised rain.
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Squeak - girgždėti (girgžda, girgždėjo, etc. - verb forms), slurp - šliurpsėti (šliurpsi, šliurpsėjo, etc.). Squeak - girgždėti - is, however, only for snow, doors or furniture. For mice or bird squeak it will be different word. It’s complicated :-)
Ah, ant there is an old saying about very cold weather - fences are making shot sounds (tvoros pyška).
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Rime Ice is a neat effect, although not snow perse. Humid foggy windy conditions that are cold enough to precipitate out the moisture from the fog onto branches and such, will be directional as if it was blown in wind.
I have a lot of celtic/scottish/etc ancestry, and many brittish friends and collegeues. Tons of words for rain far more than snow xD
Greetie - intermingled heavy showers and sun
[Greet-ee]
Dreigh - my personal fav, the gray chilly drizzlyness
[kinda hard to say/describe in english alphabet, the end is a bit gutteral for lack of better way to explain it]
Plowetery - like dreigh but darker weather & sky, often used at dusk/night
[Plowed-erry]
Smirr - fine mist that quickly soaks you thru and thru, but doesn’t feel like raindrops
[Smeer, almost like ‘smear’]
Yillen - what would be in the US a “squall” - cold heavy rain with higher wind conditions when rain is blowing at high angles or sideways
[Yill - en ]
Goselet - a straight down drenching downpour (like yillen, but no wind so rain comes straight down, and not necessarily the implication of it being cold)
[Goss - let]
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I think it can be connected to how much mushroom gathering is in culture here.
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From Northern California, and I grew up in the mountains where we actually got snow sometimes too. Here are a few of the ones I’m familiar with:
Corn Snow - we used this to describe hail that was pretty small (about the size of a kernel of corn) and usually occurred in thunderstorms, often outside the normal rainy season. It’d usually make the ground white for about 30 minutes and then be gone.
Sleet - semi-frozen rain the consistency of a slushie drink, splatters all over, kind of sticks, but doesn’t stay long.
Wet snow - the usual kind we got, big flakes, sometimes would stick and accumulate up to a foot or two, sometimes would just melt as it landed
Dry snow - tiny, fine flakes. Pretty uncommon where we were.
Thundersnow - snow from a thunderstorm, almost never actually sticks
Frost - your average light dusting of ice crystals that forms on a cold clear night
Hoarfrost - Although it’s actually incorrect, we used this to describe “needle ice”: https://s.hdnux.com/photos/56/02/30/12068406/3/1200x0.jpg (Very uncomfortable to step on barefoot. Don’t ask me how I know.)
Cold hole - the dark shady spots where the frost would last all day and not melt
Winter rain: the steady, hard, all-day kind of rain that never takes a break
Showers: intermittent sunny weather and rain
Virga - rain that falls, but evaporates before it ever reaches the ground
Drizzle: very light rain from a fully cloudy sky
Misting - even lighter than drizzle
Mist: patchy light fog that rises from the ground, early in the morning on sunny days or on warmish rainy days
Ocean fog: much thicker than mist, rolls in off the ocean in the evenings
Tule fog - very dense, ground-level fog, extremely dangerous to drive in and causes many bad accidents
Wet lightning - thunderstorm with rain associated
Dry lightning - thunderstorm with no rain, usually happens in the summer and causes lots of fires
Fire weather - hot, dry, and windy weather
Smoky - varying levels of wildfire smoke in the air, from “the air looks a bit dirty” to “I think I’m chewing on pieces of trees every time I try to breathe”
Diablo Wind - very hot, dry winds in Northern California that cause dangerous fire weather
Dust devil: a tall, rotating column of air and dust, not associated with a parent cloud like a tornado would be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_devil Someone I know was actually injured by one when it hit a fairground tent she was in.
Fire whirl: like a dust devil but inside a wildfire, and filled with ash and flames instead of dust. Dangerous to firefighters and can spread fire very quickly
Fire tornado: An actual tornado spawned by the rotating column of smoke from a very big wildfire, except instead of being made of water vapor it is made of flames and burning debris. Can be over 1/2 mile tall, have 120+mph winds, and uproot full-sized forest trees.
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Another from way down south where it is summer.
When it rains thru sunshine out of a clear blue sky - monkey’s wedding.
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I’ve noticed that a lot of the colloquial terms used in Minnesota are similar to the ones in Manitoba.
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When I was little I lived in the desert in southern California for a few years and one of my memories of the time is a cloud boiling off the mountains and drifting out over the desert raining, but not reaching the ground. It passed over me and I recall looking up directly into falling rain that was vanishing a few hundred feet above me… too far to see individual drops, but definitely close enough to see the rain clearly.
Odd to be standing under a rainstorm and being totally dry.
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Sailors in the SE USA, and perhaps elsewhere, often describe wind speeds in special terms (by no means “official”); so when it is blowing pretty hard for gentlemanly sailing - around 25 knots, it is “blowing like stink”. If the wind is blowing hard enough to cause significant wind noise, it is “really honking”. Despite many years of sailing and occasional debates on this matter, it remains unresolved (in my mind, at least) which appellation signifies greater wind speed.
A very heavy rainfall rate of an inch per hour or more is sometimes known in that same region as a “frog strangler” - I suppose it WOULD take a lot of rain to strangle a frog! A more common expression might be “raining buckets” or even “raining cats and dogs”. Rain can be misting or pouring, too.
But though I live in tropical storm country, I do not hear any differentiation of storms intensities - I think they are not common enough a phenomenon thus far, to garner specialized vocabulary - I suppose that may change though.
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I love it!! I wonder if the old three master’s used terms like that, at least informally. I can’t see Nelson using a term like that!
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