Snow language is snowballing

It used to be said Eskimos had 100 different words for snow. Now the word "Eskimo" is largely considered a pejorative term and has been replaced by Alaskan Native. With that change comes the understanding that there is no one "Eskimo" language, so the claim of 100 different words in it is a non-issue. But there is no need to look to foreign languages to find multiple names for snow. According to the Farmers' Almanac, English itself has at least 40 different terms for that cold, white, snow-flakey stuff that coats the ground in winter.

About 20 of those words are familiar: powder snow, lake effect snow, slush, blizzard, etc. Another six identify types of snowflake structures. Dendrite describes the typical six-pointed shape. Column and needle are self-descriptive. Polycrystal is an amalgamation of several snowflakes that merge into one huge flake. Rime snow occurs when snowflakes are coated in frozen water droplets.

When riming continues to the point the snowflake is no longer recognizable, it is called graupel. The word derives from a Germanic word meaning pearl barley. Graupel somewhat resembles mini hail, though hail is noisy, hard and often causes damage where it lands while graupel is softer, breaks apart easily and makes no sound when it falls. Nevertheless graupel can be dangerous when covered by subsequent snow falls because it then acts like a layer of ball bearings, rendering the snow stratum above it unstable and creating ideal conditions for an avalanche.

Some words have to do with the shapes wind and sun create on a snow surface. A finger drift is a narrow snowdrift across a roadway. When it becomes wider and deeper, it becomes a pillow drift. Ripple snow describes a series of corrugated-like marks etched by the wind, while sastrugi (Russian for small ridges) are irregular grooves and ridges in the snow created by wind. Sun cups are tightly packed bowl-shaped depressions melted into the snow surface.

Snow structures sometimes borrow their names from similar formations elsewhere. Barkhans are crescent-shaped sand dunes found in deserts all around the world and even on Mars. Logically enough, when wind forms similar dunes in snow, they are called snow barkhans.

Cornice is an Italian word meaning ledge and used in architecture to denote a molded projection crowning a structure. Similarly, snow that piles up on a ridge or mountain and sticks together enough to hang precariously over the edge is called a snow cornice. Rather than melting benignly, cornices often break at their edge point, dropping a pile of snow that triggers an avalanche.

Groups of tall, thin spikes of snow pointing sunward are called penitents because they somewhat resemble people kneeling in penance or perhaps people kneeling in hopes of placating a relentless sun god.

Snow rollers, also called wind snowballs, snow bales or snow donuts, are rare but when conditions are exactly right gravity can cause a snowball falling from a tree or cliff to roll down a steep slope, gathering more snow as it goes along. Snow rollers can also be initiated by the wind acting like a child building a snowman. Brian Bayliss, who found six of the rare balls in his field, assumed they were man-made until he noticed there were no human or any other footprints nearby.

Glaciers begin or accrue when young granular snow partially melts but then recrystallizes and compacts without becoming ice. Such snow is called névé from the Italian adjective nevoso which means snowy. Névé that survives a full season of such melting and crystallization becomes firn, which is a Swiss German word meaning "last year's." Continual compression renders firn increasingly dense. As subsequent layers of névé pile on top of it, firn eventually transforms into glacial ice.

In recent years meteorologists have moved beyond the lexicography of the Farmer's Almanac. Powerful winter weather events provoked by climate change have enlarged snow vocabulary.

Thundersnow is a type of thunderstorm where the storm clouds are so cold that, instead of producing the expected rain, they release snow or hail.

Snowbomb or snow cyclone borrows its name and meaning from "bombogenesis," the meteorological term for a cyclone that rapidly increases in intensity. The weather department defines "rapidly" as dropping at least 24 millibars in 24 hours. In other words, a snow bomb is a fast-forming, often catastrophic snowstorm.

Snow devils or snownadoes are, as the name suggests, tornadoes formed from powdery snow. As with snow rollers, conditions must be just right in order to create the rotating columns of snow that gyrate upward. The presence of a snownado often indicates a snow squall is on the way.

Snizzle, on the other hand, is when the temperature can't quite make up its mind whether to freeze or get warmer. The result is a mixture of snow and drizzling rain given the silly-sounding and somewhat Dr. Seussian name snizzle.

And finally, in the realm of funny sounding but accurately descriptive words, scientists at the California Institute of Technology coined the term Frankenstorm. They were positing a hypothetical scenario where the effects of climate warming could create multiple weather events colliding with one another. The term moved from the theoretical to the actual in October 2012 when Hurricane Sandy was diverted inland by a ridge of high pressure blocking its seaward path. Sandy was pulled further landward along the east coast by a chilling cold front rushing in from the west. Adding to that was an Arctic air blast plunging down from the north. And as if that still wasn't enough, a Halloween-esque full moon created large tidal bulges, driving higher tides than normal onto the land. The resulting Frankenstorm caused fatalities, power outages and property damage on a monstrous scale.

Depending on what weather events lie in wait, if climate change continues unabated words like blizzaster, snowpocalypse and snowmageddon are lurking just beyond the winter horizon.