Winter Weather Words Quiz

Question: What is a pogonip?

Answer: Pogonips (a word taken from the Southern Paiute language) occur in the mountain valleys of the western U.S.

Question: What can you call a heavy snow that is not quite a blizzard?

Answer: An onding is a regionalism for “heavy snow.” Skift refers to a light snowfall.

Question: Another word for ‘a person who travels to an area of warmth and sun, especially in winter’ is a:

Answer: We have been calling people who travel south for the winter sunseekers since the middle of the 20th century.

Question: Which word means “of or relating to winter”?

Answer: Hiemal is related to the word hibernate. Estival is related to summer, vernal is related to spring, and autumnal, well, is obvious.

Question: Which of these words refers to thin, bending ice, or to the act of running over such ice?

Answer: Henry David Thoreau knew something about kittly-benders. He wrote the following in Walden: “It affords me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation. Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere.”

Question: Which of these words refers to a wavelike ridge of hard snow formed by the wind?

Answer: The best place to see sastrugi (the plural form of sastruga) is in the snowfields of the arctic and antarctic regions. The word is Russian, from a Siberian dialect—whose speakers know a thing or two about sastrugi.

Question: Which of these words refers to ice newly formed in cracks, holes, or surface puddles of other ice?

Answer: Glimmer ice can be found in cracks and holes. Pomade is something you put in your hair. Cerise is a shade of red. Tortoni (also called biscuit tortoni especially when it’s served in a paper cup) sounds delicious.

Question: When was the word deice first used?

Answer: Aviation played an increasingly important role in the world in the 1930s, and keeping flying machines free of ice was important enough to inspire the coining of the word deice.

Question: What is a cryophile?

Answer: Cryophile is a scientific word, and should never be used to angrily describe a family member who insists on keeping the thermostat set low and all the windows open all winter long.

Question: What’s the best thing to do when you see corn snow?

Answer: Corn snow refers to granular snow that is formed by alternate thawing and freezing. Skiers are happy to find it when they can’t get powder—the fine, dry, light snow that experienced skiers live for.