ROANOKE, Va. – Have you ever noticed the peaceful calm and quiet of a freshly-fallen snow?
It turns out that it isn’t your mind playing tricks on you.
Snowflakes come in many different shapes and sizes, from plates to needles, columns to plates and dendrites.
Jennifer Helms caught a great shot of snow’s intricacies from Monday’s storm.
Jennifer Helms
Love the different shapes of snowflakes ❄️
Snowflakes are pretty porous, and they’re also much less dense than a raindrop. That’s why when snow falls, it hardly makes any sound.
A study at the University of Kentucky in 2016 found that snow is a great absorber of sound even as it drops from the air.
In the study, David Herrin says, “A couple inches of snow is roughly around 0.6 or 60 percent absorbing on average.”
Once the snow is over and it’s compacted on the ground, that absorbing effect can actually be replaced by more of a reflection of sound waves.
The snow we saw Monday was (mostly) a wetter consistency, since air temperatures were around 28 to 32°, making for better sledding, snowballs, snowmen, etc.