Home » Segments » Lovely Names for Snow

Lovely Names for Snow

Play episode
The 1955 Glossary of Arctic and Subarctic Terms is a collection of and indigenous that’s dated, but often , which describes the features of an extremely cold landscape. Among those terms are diamond dust, also called snow mist is “the precipitation of fine ice crystals directly from the atmosphere with no cloud formation present.” Snow pellets are sometimes called tapioca snow, and a sugar iceberg is “an iceberg composed of porous glacier ice.” Nieve penitente, which is Spanish for “penitent snow,” refers to spikes or pinnacles of ice or granular snow left by the uneven melting of a snowbank or glacier. Nieve penitente is found in the high altitudes along the border of Chile and Argentina, and may be so named either because from a they look like penitents kneeling in the cold or they resemble the tall, pointed habits worn by certain religious orders in the Processions of Penance during Spanish Holy Week. This is part of a complete episode.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More from this show

Yellowsail - Be There or Be Square

Be There or Be Square

John in Omaha, Nebraska, wonders about a phrase that encourages someone to attend an event or risk being left out or feeling uncool: be there or be square. Don’t fall for the fake etymology about people wearing boxes on their heads! Ditto for...

Recent posts

Segments