can it really be "Too cold to snow?"?

Question

that saying has always bothered me. Jasper Carrot joked in his stand up comedy about it being minus 50 in the arctic and it snows all the time.

Answer 1

There is no fix temperature at which it is "too cold to snow". In theory, no such temperature exists. It all depends on the temperature together with the humidity.

Snow falls from clouds (obviously), and the colder the clouds are, the more likely they are to release snow.

If the air is very cold, it's common that the snow that falls takes most of the moisture away from the clouds and the atmosphere. No new clouds will form due to the lack of moisture; hence the snowfall will stop as the clouds dissolve.

I think the idea that it can be too cold to snow comes from the fact that when the sky is clear, it's colder than when the sky is cloudy (I mean in the winter, of course, and especially in the areas of the world where the winter nights are long). And if there are no clouds, there will be no snow either - so a very cold night means that there will be no snow.

(There may be ice crystals falling from the sky even if there are no clouds. Under certain conditions, if the sky is clear and the temperature low, ice crystals may form "out of nothing" and fall to the ground. These ice crystals are, strictly meteorologically speaking, not snow.)

Answer 2

Yes. Very cold air is dry. Snow needs moisture. No moisture = no snow. Never mind what the temperature is.

Similarly, it can be too hot for a thunderstorm to form. During summer in the Middle East, storms never form because it is too hot.

At extremes of heat and cold, precipitation is not favored.

Answer 3

As a general rule, in the North and South Poles it is too cold to actually snow. The wind just blows the snow around giving the appearance that it is snowing. Snow is formed in warmer temperatures away from those areas where water droplets change to snow and the wind carries the snow to those areas where it does not melt, but just keeps blowing around.

Answer 4

It can't be too cold to snow - but at very cold temperatures snow is less likely. Warmer air means more convection, which means moist air from the lower atmosphere rises to meet cold air in the upper atmosphere where snow forms. The colder it is the less likely this is to happen. However, if there is still sufficient lifting of the atmosphere then it can still snow at very cold temperatures.


*edit* which is basically what the guy above says, but slightly simplified

Answer 5

One phrase that is heard from time to time is that, "it is too cold to snow today". In actuality, earth's troposphere is not too cold to snow but rather it is "too dynamically stable to snow". Dynamic stability may be present due to low-level cold air advection, a lack of upper level divergence, and/or a lack of low level convergence. Also, if dynamic lifting does occur it may not produce precipitation that reaches the surface due to low relative humidity values in the lower troposphere.

The ingredients for snow are: (1) a temperature profile that allows snow to reach the surface, (2) saturated air, and (3) enough lifting of that saturated air to allow snow to develop aloft and fall to reach the surface. In a situation when it is said "it is too cold to snow" there is in reality not enough lifting of air that causes snow to reach the surface.

The phrase "it is too cold to snow today" probably originated as a misapplication of the relationship between temperature and the maximum amount of water vapor that can be in the air. When temperature decreases, the maximum capacity of water vapor that can be in the air decreases. Therefore, the colder it gets the less water vapor there will be in the air.

Even at very cold surface temperatures significant snowfall can occur because: (1) intense lifting can produce significant precipitation even at a very low temperature, (2) the temperature aloft can be much warmer than the temperature at the surface. The relatively warmer air aloft can have a larger moisture content than air in the PBL, (3) Moisture advection can continue to bring a renewed supply of moisture into a region where lifting is occurring, (4) Even at very cold temperatures the air always has a capacity to have some water vapor.

If the air cools to truly frigid Arctic temperatures such as -40 C and below then the moisture capacity of the air will be so low that likely not much snow can occur. Only at these extremely low temperatures is the phrase "it is too cold to snow" fairly valid.

At the temperature of absolute zero ( 0 K, -273 C, -459 F) all air including water vapor condenses and loses all molecular energy. The temperature can not cool below absolute zero.

Answer 6

It can be too cold to snow heavily because moisture freezes (which is what snow is, technically, frozen rain) below a certain temperature, so the snow will clump, but NO, it can't be too cold to snow.

Answer 7

well yes it can be too cold to snow but only if the degress outside reaches below 300 degrees and i dont think that that could happen only if the sun was sucked up by a black hole and we didnt have any sun anymore... if pluto did have an atmosphere then it could be too cold to snow over there and it would be too cold for any precipitation...LOL... Merry Christmas...

-Ladlovergirl

Answer 8

yes