190 Fun Facts About Winter

When the Northern Hemisphere has its winter at Christmas, which of these countries is having summer?

Australia lies south of the Equator, where the seasons run the other way round: schools break up for the long holidays just before Christmas, and the big meal is often served cold.

Meteorologists in the Northern Hemisphere count winter as which months?

Meteorological winter is December, January and February, the three coldest months on average; astronomical winter starts later, at the December solstice, and runs to the March equinox.

What causes the seasons, including winter?

The tilt of Earth's axis, about 23.5 degrees, means each hemisphere spends half the year leaning away from the Sun, when its sunlight arrives lower in the sky and for fewer hours.

What is the name for the point in Earth's orbit, reached each January, when it is closest to the Sun?

Perihelion falls in the first week of January, about two weeks after the December solstice, so Earth is some three million miles nearer the Sun in northern midwinter than in July.

The winter solstice, the Northern Hemisphere's shortest day, usually falls on which dates?

The winter solstice usually falls on 21 or 22 December, when the noon Sun is lowest in the northern sky; daylight grows from then on, even though the coldest weeks are still to come.

The winter solstice sunrise shines through a roof-box at which Stone Age tomb site in Ireland?

Newgrange catches the light for about 17 minutes at dawn, when it runs down the passage to the inner chamber, and a yearly lottery decides who gets to stand inside.

Snow crystals of every size and pattern share the same basic symmetry because of what?

The hexagonal structure of ice: water molecules lock into six-sided rings as they freeze, so crystals grow as six-sided plates and six-armed stars.

Guinness lists the largest snowflakes ever reported, in Montana in 1887, as how wide?

15 inches (38 cm) is the width Guinness lists for flakes reported at Fort Keogh in January 1887; such giants are clumps of many snow crystals that collide and stick together as they fall.

Which photographer captured more than 5,000 snowflakes through a microscope, starting in 1885?

Wilson Bentley, a Vermont farmer, caught each flake on a black board, lifted it onto a glass slide with a broom straw and photographed it before it could melt.

Earth's lowest directly recorded air temperature, -89.2 °C, was measured in 1983 where?

Vostok Station, Antarctica, recorded -89.2 °C on 21 July 1983, the lowest directly measured air temperature; satellite-derived surface readings near -98 °C on the East Antarctic plateau do not count as official records.

At what temperature do the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales read the same number?

-40 is the crossover: setting F equal to C in F = 1.8C + 32 gives C = -40, the one reading where a Canadian and an American agree without converting.

The wind chill index estimates how fast the wind strips heat from what?

Exposed skin is all the index describes: wind cannot push a car radiator or a water pipe below the actual air temperature, it only gets them there faster.

Inside the Arctic and Antarctic circles, what is the winter period when the Sun never rises above the horizon called?

Polar night is rarely pitch black: in Tromsø, Norway, where the Sun stays down for weeks in midwinter, midday still brings a few hours of twilight.

The 'borealis' in aurora borealis comes from the name of the ancient Greek god of what?

The north wind was Boreas, whose name gives 'borealis'; Athenians built him a shrine after crediting him with wrecking a Persian fleet in a storm.

Roughly what fraction of an iceberg's volume floats above the water?

About one-tenth: ice is roughly nine-tenths as dense as seawater, so some 90 percent of an iceberg sits below the surface, which is where 'tip of the iceberg' comes from.

Pink 'watermelon snow' seen on mountains and glaciers is caused by what?

An alga with a red pigment tints old snow, a colour Aristotle noted more than 2,000 years ago; the dark blooms soak up sunlight and make glaciers melt faster.

Which is the only bird species known to hibernate?

The common poorwill was confirmed as a hibernator in the 1940s, when one was found torpid in California's Chuckwalla Mountains, yet its Hopi name already meant 'the sleeping one'.

Which North American frog survives winter frozen solid and ranges farther north than any other amphibian on the continent?

The wood frog floods its cells with glucose as an antifreeze while up to two-thirds of its body water turns to ice; its heart and breathing stop until the spring thaw.

Female bears do what during their winter dormancy?

Bears give birth to their cubs in the den in midwinter; each newborn weighs about a pound, and the mother nurses them until spring without eating or drinking herself.

The snowshoe hare turns white on schedule each autumn, even when no snow has fallen, in response to what?

Shorter days set off the moult, so in a late, snowless autumn a white hare stands out against the bare ground and is easier for predators to catch.

Which is the only penguin that breeds during the Antarctic winter, with males incubating an egg on their feet?

Emperor penguin males balance the single egg on their feet for about two months without eating, huddling together and taking turns in the warm middle of the pack.

Among deer, what is unique about reindeer antlers?

Females may grow antlers, and they keep them through winter until their calves are born, so in midwinter it is the big bulls, which shed theirs after the autumn rut, that go bare-headed.

St Bernard dogs became famous at a monks' hospice on an Alpine pass for doing what job?

Rescue work made them famous, though the monks first kept them as guard dogs; one dog, Barry, is credited with saving more than 40 lives, and the brandy barrel is a myth traced to an 1820 painting.

In Greek myth, Demeter leaves the earth barren each winter while her daughter stays where?

In the underworld with Hades, Persephone tasted pomegranate seeds, and having eaten the food of the dead she was bound to return below for part of every year.

In Russia, gifts at New Year are brought by Ded Moroz, whose name translates as what?

Grandfather Frost was banned by the early Soviet state, then brought back in the 1930s as the face of a secular New Year, which is why he hands out gifts on New Year's Eve.

According to tradition, what happens if the groundhog sees its shadow on February 2?

Six more weeks of winter is the forecast; German settlers brought the custom to Pennsylvania, where they found no badgers to watch and turned to the groundhog.

Hanukkah recalls a one-day supply of what lasting eight days?

Oil is the miracle Hanukkah recalls: the Talmud tells of one sealed jar, enough for a day, that kept the menorah alight for eight, which is why fried foods like latkes are eaten.

Chinese New Year celebrations traditionally end on the fifteenth day with which festival?

The Lantern Festival falls on the first full moon of the lunar year, when streets fill with lanterns carrying riddles to solve and families eat sweet rice balls called tangyuan.

Olympia, the record snowwoman built in Bethel, Maine, in 2008, wore a 100-foot scarf and stood about how tall?

122 feet, nearly ten feet taller than the town's 1999 record-holder: Olympia was named after Maine senator Olympia Snowe and had old skis for eyelashes and painted car tyres for lips.

Which Renaissance artist was commissioned by Piero de' Medici to make a snowman in 1494?

Michelangelo, then 18, built it in the Medici palace courtyard after heavy snow fell on Florence in January 1494; Vasari, who records the commission, called the statue very beautiful.

The first Winter Olympic Games were held in 1924 in which town?

Chamonix, France, staged what was billed as an 'International Winter Sports Week'; only afterwards did the IOC decide to count it as the first Winter Olympics.

Which country leads the all-time medal table at the Winter Olympics?

Norway has won more than 400 Winter Olympic medals, far more than any other nation, and over half of them have come from just two sports: cross-country skiing and speed skating.

Curling stones are made of granite quarried mainly on Ailsa Craig, an island off the coast of which country?

Scotland's Ailsa Craig, a small island in the Firth of Clyde, supplies the granite, and only stones cut from it by one firm, Kays of Scotland, are approved for the Winter Olympics.

Bobsleigh's federation says the sport got its name from what?

Crews bobbing back and forth to gain speed is the story the sport tells; dictionaries instead trace 'bobsled' to an 1830s American word for two short sleds coupled together.

The 1993 film Cool Runnings was inspired by which country's bobsleigh team at the 1988 Calgary Olympics?

Jamaica's four-man sled crashed on its third run at Calgary 1988 and the crew walked beside it to the finish; the film has them hoist the sled and carry it over the line.

A two-man bobsleigh crew is made up of a pilot and which other athlete?

The brakeman helps sprint the sled off the start, then rides tucked in behind the pilot and pulls the brake lever only once the sled has crossed the finish line.

Biathlon combines cross-country skiing with which other skill?

Rifle shooting is biathlon's other half: competitors ski loops then shoot five targets prone or standing, with penalty loops or time added for each miss.

The word 'ski' comes from an Old Norse word meaning what?

Cleft wood, a billet split from a log, is the sense behind Old Norse skíð; English borrowed 'ski' from Norwegian, where the word is still pronounced 'shee'.

Frank Zamboni built the first ice-resurfacing machine in 1949 at his rink in which warm-weather US state?

California: Zamboni opened his Iceland rink near Los Angeles when his block-ice business was fading, then spent years on failed prototypes before his resurfacer worked.

The Iditarod sled dog race, run each March, goes from Anchorage to which town?

Nome, on the Bering Sea coast, is the finish; even the last musher to pass under its burled arch takes home a prize, the Red Lantern.

Japan's snow monkeys are famous for keeping warm in winter by doing what?

Soaking in hot springs is a habit the macaques of Jigokudani took up in the 1960s; no other non-human primate lives so far north.

Which US ski area set the world record for snowfall in one season, 1,140 inches in 1998–99?

Mt. Baker Ski Area logged about 95 feet of snow in a record NOAA verified; despite its name, it stands miles from the volcano itself, nearer the neighbouring peak Mount Shuksan.

Frost fairs on the frozen Thames ended after 1814, partly because which bridge was rebuilt with wider arches?

London Bridge's medieval piers had acted like a dam, slowing the Thames enough to freeze; at the last fair, in 1814, an elephant was led across the ice.

Which change did New York City make after the Great Blizzard of 1888 cut it off from the outside world?

Bury its overhead wires: the storm snapped telegraph and telephone lines and stranded passengers on elevated trains, a mess that also fed the campaign for a subway, opened in 1904.

A nor'easter storm on the US East Coast is named after what?

The direction its winds blow from: the storm itself generally tracks northeastward up the coast, while the gales it drives onshore come out of the northeast.

The Winter War of 1939 to 1940 was fought between the Soviet Union and which country?

Finland's ski troops in white camouflage held off a far larger army for three and a half months, and coined the name 'Molotov cocktail', before ceding territory in the Moscow Peace Treaty.

During the Christmas Truce of 1914, British and German soldiers played which sport in no man's land?

Football, soccer to Americans, was played in impromptu kick-abouts between the trenches; the next December, commanders issued strict orders to prevent any repeat of the truce.

Disney's Frozen was loosely inspired by which Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale?

The Snow Queen gave Frozen its start, with Elsa written as the villain until the song 'Let It Go' moved the filmmakers to rewrite her as a frightened, sympathetic heroine.

Who provides the voice of Olaf the snowman in Frozen?

Josh Gad improvised some of Olaf's lines, and his recording sessions were videotaped so the animators could borrow his expressions and gestures for the snowman.

In C. S. Lewis's Narnia, locked in winter for a hundred years, the White Witch tempts Edmund with which sweet?

Turkish delight is the bait: the Witch plies Edmund with it, promises him more and a princedom besides, and he ends up betraying his brother and sisters.

Which Baroque composer's 'Winter' concerto imitates chattering teeth and feet stamping in the cold?

Vivaldi published The Four Seasons in 1725 with a sonnet for each concerto, and set the poems' images line by line into the music, from the shivering to the fireside.

In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Jack Torrance becomes the winter caretaker of which remote Colorado hotel?

The Overlook's exterior is Oregon's Timberline Lodge, whose managers asked Kubrick to swap the novel's Room 217 for a non-existent 237 so that guests would not shun a real room.

Frances McDormand won an Oscar as pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson in which 1996 film?

Fargo opens with a caption calling it a true story, yet the Coen brothers made the plot up; and despite the title, most of the film plays out in Minnesota, around Minneapolis and Brainerd.

Citizen Kane opens with Charles Foster Kane dropping which object as he says 'Rosebud'?

Kane drops a snow globe holding a snowy cabin as he dies at Xanadu; the meaning of Rosebud, the name on his childhood sled, is revealed only in the final shot.

The Maya drank chocolate as a frothy drink often flavoured with which spice?

Chili peppers gave the Maya drink its bite; they ground cacao seeds with water and poured the mix back and forth between vessels to raise a froth.

On Stir-up Sunday, the last before Advent, British families traditionally make what?

Christmas pudding is mixed weeks ahead, with each member of the family taking a turn to stir and make a wish; the day's name, though, comes from a church prayer that begins 'Stir up'.

The world's first ice hotel, rebuilt every winter from river ice, is in Jukkasjärvi in which country?

Jukkasjärvi is in Sweden's far north, near Kiruna; the hotel grew out of an ice-art exhibition whose visitors asked to sleep in the gallery, and it is rebuilt each winter from Torne River ice.

Bonhomme, a seven-foot snowman in a red cap, is the mascot of the winter carnival held where?

Quebec City's winter carnival has run every year since 1955, the year Bonhomme first appeared, and he presides over it from a palace built of ice.

The world's largest ice and snow festival is held in which Chinese city?

Harbin, in China's far north-east, builds the festival's full-size palaces from blocks of ice cut out of the frozen Songhua River and lights them up after dark.

On which mountain was a 231 mph wind gust, then a world record, measured in 1934?

Mount Washington, New Hampshire, clocked the gust when its summit observatory was less than two years old; the observatory credits the feat with securing its place on the summit, and the record stood until a 1996 cyclone.

Nanook of the North (1922), about an Inuk family in the Arctic, is often called the first what?

Hit feature-length documentary is the usual label, though Flaherty staged scenes: the igloo interior was shot in a special three-walled igloo so his bulky camera had enough light.

Antifreeze proteins were first isolated in the 1960s from what?

Arthur DeVries found them in the late 1960s in Antarctic fish, which swim in seawater colder than the point at which their blood would otherwise freeze.

Graupel, or 'soft hail', forms when supercooled droplets freeze onto what?

Supercooled cloud droplets collide with falling snowflakes and freeze on as rime, building opaque 2-5 mm balls that crumble when squeezed, unlike true hail.

In British usage, the word 'sleet' usually means what?

In British usage sleet is rain and snow mixed, or snow that partly melts as it falls; in the United States the word means ice pellets, raindrops that freeze on the way down.

The US National Weather Service defines a blizzard by wind speed and which other measure, rather than by snowfall?

Visibility must fall below a quarter mile, with winds of 35 mph or more, for three hours; no snow need fall at all, since a 'ground blizzard' whips up what is already lying.

A snowslide of tightly packed snow set off by a collapsing weak layer is called what?

A slab avalanche breaks away as one cohesive plate; slabs cause about nine in ten avalanche deaths, and most are set off by the victim or someone in the victim's party.

Lake-effect snow occurs when cold air moves across long stretches of what?

Warmer open water feeds the clouds with heat and moisture, so the snow machine downwind of Lake Erie eases off once the lake freezes over.

What name is given to ground that stays at or below freezing for at least two years running?

Permafrost is defined by temperature alone, not by ice: ground that holds at or below 0 °C for two years counts even if it is bone dry.

How much ice must accumulate for the US Weather Service to call it an ice storm?

The NWS issues an ice storm warning for 0.25 inch or more of ice accumulation; such glaze can snap branches and power lines and is also known as a silver thaw.

Which arctic bird's feathers moult from white in winter to grey and brown in summer?

The rock ptarmigan turns white for winter and even has feathered feet, which work like snowshoes on soft snow; its genus name, Lagopus, means 'hare-foot'.

Which Arctic predator turns white for winter, with fur even on its paw pads?

The Arctic fox sheds its coat twice a year, and the dense winter fur on its feet earned it the species name lagopus, Greek for 'hare-footed'.

Which winter sport was first held at the Olympics at the 1908 London Summer Games?

Figure skating made the London 1908 programme months after the main events were over: the skaters competed in late October at Prince's Skating Club in Knightsbridge.

Which city staged the first organised indoor ice hockey game, on March 3, 1875?

Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink staged it; to keep the crowd safe, James Creighton's players swapped the usual ball for a flat disc of wood that stayed on the ice, an early puck.

Under what name was the Stanley Cup commissioned in 1892?

The Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup was the name Lord Stanley, Canada's governor general, had engraved on the silver bowl he ordered from London in 1892 for the country's top amateur club; it was first awarded in 1893.

In luge, how does the rider lie on the sled?

Face up, feet first is the luge position: riders lie flat to cut the air and steer by pressing their calves against the runners and shifting their shoulders.

Luge made its Olympic debut in 1964 at the Winter Games held in which Austrian city?

Innsbruck's 1964 Games brought luge into the Olympics, but the winter was so mild that the Austrian army had to haul thousands of cubic metres of snow up to the ski courses and pack it down.

On a ski jumping hill, what is the 'K-point'?

The K-point is the target line in the landing area: on Olympic hills a jump that reaches it scores 60 distance points, with points added for every metre beyond it and taken off for every metre short.

Which sport's first Olympic champion, in 1998, briefly lost his gold over a cannabis test?

Snowboarding's first gold went to Canada's Ross Rebagliati, who was stripped of it after testing positive for marijuana and got it back within days because the drug was not on the IOC's banned list.

Sherman Poppen's 1960s snowboard precursor was nicknamed what by his wife?

The Snurfer got its name when Nancy Poppen blended 'snow' and 'surfer'; her husband built the board on Christmas Day 1965 to amuse their children, and Brunswick licensed it the next year.

Nordic combined pairs ski jumping with which other discipline?

Cross-country skiing is the second half: the Gundersen method converts the jump scores into start-time gaps, and the first skier over the line in the race wins.

Alpine skiing joined the Olympics in 1936 as a combined event, slalom plus which other race?

Downhill and slalom results were added together for one set of medals; the IOC barred paid ski instructors, which kept out Austria's world champion Toni Seelos, and Germans took gold and silver in both the men's and women's events.

Which new sport made its Olympic debut at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games?

Ski mountaineering, or skimo, debuted at Bormio with men's and women's sprints and a mixed relay: racers climb uphill on skis fitted with grip skins before skiing back down.

Which Danish word for cosy contentment, strongest in the long winters, became a lifestyle craze in 2016?

Hygge filled British bookshops with guides to living cosily in 2016, and that year it made Collins Dictionary's ten-word shortlist for word of the year, which Brexit won.

Which city became the first to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics?

Beijing hosted the Summer Games in 2008 and the Winter Games in 2022, using the Bird's Nest stadium for both opening ceremonies.

Napoleon's Grande Armée invaded Russia in June 1812 by crossing which river on the empire's western border?

The Neman was the frontier the Grande Armée crossed near Kaunas on 24 June 1812; that December its frozen remnants straggled back over the same river, most of the army lost to battle, cold and disease.

Washington's army endured the winter of 1777–78 at which Pennsylvania encampment?

Valley Forge sheltered some 12,000 troops from December 1777 to June 1778; disease killed nearly 2,000 people there, and the Prussian officer Baron von Steuben drilled the survivors into a unified army.

The Donner Party spent the winter of 1846–47 snowbound in which mountain range?

They were trapped by early snow near what is now Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada; of 87 emigrants, about half died, and some survivors resorted to cannibalism.

Which volcano's 1815 eruption caused 1816's 'Year Without a Summer'?

Mount Tambora, in Indonesia, blew in April 1815 in the largest eruption in recorded history; its haze ruined harvests in Europe and New England and kept Mary Shelley indoors that summer, writing Frankenstein.

The Battle of the Bulge began on 16 December 1944 in which forested region?

The Ardennes, in Belgium and Luxembourg, was the thinly held sector Germany struck through; the aim was to seize Antwerp and split the Allied lines, and the 'bulge' was the dent in the front.

Shackleton's ship Endurance became trapped in the ice of which sea?

The Weddell Sea's pack ice trapped Endurance in early 1915 and sank it that November; Shackleton then sailed a lifeboat 800 miles to South Georgia for help, and all 28 of the ship's party survived.

What does Lucia wear on her head in Scandinavia's Saint Lucy's Day processions?

A crown of candles tops Lucia's white gown and red sash as she serves saffron buns; in one legend the saint wore a candle-lit wreath to keep her hands free to carry food to Christians in hiding.

In Alpine folklore, the horned Krampus accompanies which figure on 5 December?

Krampus accompanies Saint Nicholas on Krampusnacht, 5 December, the eve of the saint's feast day; the saint rewards good children while Krampus punishes the naughty with birch rods.

Boxing Day, 26 December, is also the feast day of which martyr in much of Europe?

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, has his feast on 26 December, the day Good King Wenceslas 'looked out'; the name Boxing Day may come from the boxes of alms or gifts handed to the poor and to servants.

Twelfth Night, the last of the twelve days of Christmas, is the eve of which feast?

Twelfth Night is the eve of Epiphany, 6 January; it falls on 5 or 6 January depending on whether the twelve days are counted from Christmas Day or from 26 December.

Epiphany, 6 January, commemorates in Western Christianity the visit of which group to the Christ Child?

The Magi's visit is what Epiphany marks in the West, as Christ's showing to the Gentiles; in Mexico and much of Latin America children wake that morning to presents left by the Three Kings.

Candlemas, on 2 February, commemorates what event?

Candlemas marks the presentation of Jesus at the Temple forty days after his birth, along with the purification of Mary; churches bless their candles for the year that day, which is how it got its name.

Winterlude, with skating on the frozen Rideau Canal, is held each February in which pair of cities?

Ottawa–Gatineau has shared Winterlude since 1979: skaters take to the canal on the Ottawa side, while Jacques-Cartier Park across the river in Gatineau becomes a snow park of ice slides and sculptures.

Which Japanese city's Snow Festival began in 1950 when high-school students built a few snow statues in a park?

Sapporo's festival grew from those student statues in Odori Park into a February show of giant snow and ice sculptures; soldiers from a nearby base joined in from 1955 and built the first huge ones.

Which bonfire festival do Punjabis celebrate in mid-January to mark the end of winter?

Lohri falls on 13 January, the eve of Maghi: families gather round a bonfire at sunset and sing of Dulla Bhatti, a 16th-century rebel remembered as the Punjabi Robin Hood.

During Japan's Setsubun in early February, people throw what to drive away demons?

Roasted beans, usually soybeans, are flung out of the door to the shout 'Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!' (demons out, luck in); afterwards everyone eats one bean for each year of their age.

Burns Night suppers are held on or near which day of January?

The first supper in 1802 was mistakenly held on 29 January.

Imbolc, the Gaelic festival on 1 February, is also the feast day of which Irish saint?

Brigid of Kildare's feast is 1 February, when Irish families still weave crosses of rushes in her name to hang in the house; since 2023 Ireland has marked the day with a public holiday.

In Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Leontes is king of where?

Sicily is Leontes's kingdom; in a jealous rage he has his baby daughter abandoned on the coast of Bohemia, where the courtier who leaves her makes the famous exit 'pursued by a bear'.

David Lean's snowy epic Doctor Zhivago (1965) was mostly filmed in which country?

Spain stood in for Russia because Pasternak's novel was banned in the Soviet Union: a Moscow street set rose outside Madrid, and in an unusually warm winter some of the snow was faked with marble dust.

Irving Berlin's 'White Christmas' was written for which 1942 film?

Holiday Inn had Bing Crosby introduce the song, which won the Oscar; ten years later a Memphis motel-builder's architect borrowed the film's title as a joke, and the name stuck to the chain.

The animated film The Snowman (1982) was based on a picture book by which author?

Raymond Briggs published the wordless picture book in 1978; Channel 4 first showed the film on 26 December 1982, and 'Walking in the Air' became a hit for Aled Jones in 1985.

Whose novella Ethan Frome turns on a deliberate sled crash in wintry Starkfield?

Edith Wharton has Ethan and Mattie steer their sled into an elm on purpose; both survive, badly hurt, and twenty-four years on they still share one house with his wife Zeena, who now nurses Mattie.

Leonardo DiCaprio's frozen-frontier film The Revenant portrays which real frontiersman?

Hugh Glass was mauled by a grizzly in 1823 and left for dead by the men told to stay with him; the story has him crawl and stumble some 200 miles to Fort Kiowa before setting out after them.

March of the Penguins, an Oscar-winning 2005 documentary, came from which country?

France's Luc Jacquet released it with actors speaking the birds' thoughts; the American version replaced them with Morgan Freeman's narration and went on to win the documentary Oscar.

In the film Ice Age (2002), what kind of animal is Sid?

A ground sloth is what Sid is, voiced by John Leguizamo; the real Ice Age giants were nothing like him, with one of the largest, Megatherium, growing as big as an elephant.

Oymyakon, often called the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth, lies in which Russian republic?

Yakutia, officially the Sakha Republic, fills much of eastern Siberia; Oymyakon recorded -67.7 °C there in February 1933, and its school stays open until the cold is well past -50 °C.

Continental North America's record low was set in 1947 at Snag, near the Alaska border in which part of Canada?

Yukon's Snag airfield recorded -63 °C (-81 °F) on 3 February 1947; the weather staff said voices carried for miles and their breath froze with an audible hiss.

'Frosty the Snowman' was first recorded in 1950 by which singing cowboy?

Gene Autry cut it in 1950 because its writers, Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson, pitched it to him as a follow-up to his hit of the year before, 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'.

The 1925 serum run, a sled-dog relay across Alaska, carried antitoxin for which disease?

Diphtheria antitoxin was relayed 674 miles by 20 mushers and about 150 dogs in five and a half days, through blizzard and gale, and the run made front-page news across the United States.

Balto got the fame, but which lead dog ran the longest and most dangerous leg of the 1925 serum run?

Togo, aged 12, led Leonhard Seppala's team 261 miles in all, crossing the exposed sea ice of Norton Sound; Balto ran only the last 55 miles, yet got the headlines and a statue in New York.

Which US city's citizens raised funds in 1927 to buy the neglected sled dog Balto?

Cleveland's schoolchildren and businessmen raised about $2,000 in 1927 to rescue Balto and his team from a Los Angeles dime museum; his mounted body is in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Snowmobile pioneer Joseph-Armand Bombardier came from which Canadian province?

Quebec's village of Valcourt was his home: on New Year's Eve 1922, aged 15, he tested a sled driven by a Model T engine and a propeller, and the Ski-Doo followed in 1959.

The world's first ski chairlifts were built in 1936–37 at which Idaho resort?

Sun Valley opened in December 1936 with chairlifts on Proctor and Dollar mountains; Union Pacific engineer James Curran adapted the design from banana-loading conveyors he had seen.

Cheese fondue was pushed as a national dish in the 1930s by which country's cheese union?

Switzerland's Cheese Union, a cartel with cheese to shift, promoted fondue as the national dish from the 1930s and later sent fondue sets to army regiments to spread the habit.

Löyly, the steam and heat of a sauna, is a word from which language?

Löyly is Finnish and once meant spirit or soul as well as steam; bathers raise it by throwing water on the hot stones, and the earliest saunas were simply pits dug into a slope.

Feuerzangenbowle, a Christmas-market variant of Glühwein, sets fire to what over the bowl?

A rum-soaked sugar cone, the Zuckerhut, burns on tongs above the bowl so that the caramelising sugar drips into the wine; a 1944 film comedy named after the drink, starring Heinz Rühmann, boosted its popularity.

The 'nog' in eggnog was first recorded in the 1690s as a strong kind of what, brewed in Norfolk?

Beer: nog was a strong East Anglian ale, on record from 1693, and 'eggnog' first turns up in America in 1775; a rival theory ties the name to 'noggin', a small wooden mug.

Glögg, the Nordic mulled wine, is traditionally served with which two things in the cup?

Raisins and blanched almonds wait in the cup for the hot spiced wine to be poured over them; the name comes from the Swedish verb glödga, to heat or mull, itself from a word for a glowing coal.

The earliest known snowman picture, from about 1380, sits in the margin of what?

A prayer book, a Book of Hours, holds the drawing; by 1511 snowmen were satire, when the people of Brussels filled their streets with snow figures, many of them rude or mocking.

A 2007 study traced the first ice skating, on bone blades, to which lake-dotted region?

Southern Finland is where Federico Formenti and Alberto Minetti placed the first skaters, thousands of years ago: with so many lakes between villages, gliding straight across on bone skates saved the most energy.

The word 'toboggan' most likely comes from which language family?

Algonquian speakers gave French Canadians the word, from a term such as Mi'kmaq tepaqan for a sled dragged over the snow, and English then borrowed it from Canadian French.

Snegurochka, the young helper of Russia's Ded Moroz, has a name meaning what?

Snegurochka means Snow Maiden, from sneg, the Russian for snow; she and Ded Moroz deliver gifts under the New Year tree on New Year's Eve.

The 1967 NFL 'Ice Bowl' pitted the Green Bay Packers against which team?

The Dallas Cowboys lost 21–17 at Lambeau Field on 31 December 1967, in cold so fierce that the referee's whistle froze to his lips; Bart Starr's quarterback sneak won it in the final seconds.

The Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg now houses which museum?

The Hermitage's main building is the Winter Palace, the tsars' residence stormed in the October Revolution of 1917; Catherine the Great began the collection in 1764 as her private gallery.

Britain's 'Winter of Discontent' of 1978–79 was marked by widespread what?

Strikes by lorry drivers, gravediggers and refuse collectors paralysed services as unions rejected Callaghan's 5 percent pay limit; the name comes from the opening line of Shakespeare's Richard III.

The 'nuclear winter' hypothesis says firestorms would inject what into the stratosphere?

Soot from burning cities would block sunlight and chill the surface until harvests failed far from any blast; a 1983 study by a team that included Carl Sagan brought the idea to public notice.

Which grain do farmers sow in autumn because its winter varieties need weeks of cold before they will flower?

Wheat's winter varieties will not form ears until they have been chilled for weeks, a need called vernalization, so they are sown in autumn, sit out the cold as seedlings and ripen the next summer.

Vienna's Erwin Perzy stumbled on the snow globe in 1900 while trying to brighten which new invention?

The electric light bulb was what Perzy, a maker of surgical instruments, hoped to brighten with a water-filled glass globe; the semolina he tipped in drifted down like snow, and his family firm was still making globes a century later.

Snowdrops belong to the genus Galanthus, a name meaning what in Greek?

Milk flower is the meaning, from the Greek gala (milk) and anthos (flower); snowdrop bulbs also gave medicine galantamine, a compound now used to ease the symptoms of early Alzheimer's disease.

Which star joins Betelgeuse and Procyon to form the Winter Triangle?

Sirius, the Dog Star and the brightest in the night sky, completes the triangle; ancient Egyptians watched for its first dawn rising each year because it came just as the Nile began to flood.

On Christmas night 1776, George Washington led his army across which ice-choked river to surprise the Hessians at Trenton?

The Delaware was running with ice in a storm of sleet that night; the dawn attack on Trenton captured most of the Hessian garrison and revived an army whose morale had all but collapsed.

Which Germanic midwinter festival gave its name to the log traditionally burned at Christmas?

Yule was the old Germanic midwinter feast, later merged with Christmas; the log named after it was burned on the hearth on Christmas Eve and survives on many tables today as a log-shaped chocolate cake.

The nickname 'Abominable Snowman' arose from a 1921 newspaper mistranslation of a local name for which creature?

The Yeti got its English nickname when journalist Henry Newman, interviewing porters from a 1921 Everest expedition, rendered their name for the track-maker, metoh-kangmi, as 'abominable snowman'.

Which king is said to have eaten ox roasted on the frozen Thames at London's frost fair of 1683–84?

Charles II joined the crowds on the ice that winter, when the river stayed frozen for two months; a printer there sold souvenir cards stamped with each buyer's name, and the king bought one.

Why is curling nicknamed 'the roaring game'?

The sound of stones over the pebbled ice is the roar: the sheet is sprayed with water droplets that freeze into tiny bumps, and the heavy granite rumbles as it rides along on top of them.

What do meteorologists call a rare storm where lightning flashes while snow falls instead of rain?

Thundersnow is muffled by the falling flakes, so its thunder arrives as a low rumble instead of a sharp crack. The storm cloud's top also sits unusually low.

Which name is given to the thin, see-through glaze on winter roads that drivers can barely spot?

Black ice is not black at all: it is clear, and simply shows the dark road surface beneath it. It often forms when drizzle lands on a road colder than 0 °C.

Which sprite of folklore is blamed for the fern-like ice patterns found on cold windows at dawn?

Jack Frost has far less glass to decorate these days, because double glazing has made window frost rare. Folklore also blames him for nipping fingers and toes.

Which weather condition makes the horizon vanish as blowing snow blends ground and sky together?

A whiteout leaves travellers with no points of visual reference to navigate by, as land and sky turn featureless. Fog or blowing sand can cause the same effect.

Which US state holds the national record low of about −80 °F, logged at Prospect Creek in 1971?

Alaska logged the reading beside the route of the future Trans-Alaska Pipeline, where a camp later housed some of the workers who built it.

Which band of low-pressure air circling the Arctic can spill bitter cold south when it weakens?

The polar vortex keeps Arctic air penned in while it spins strongly. When it weakens it can break into smaller vortices, letting masses of cold air push toward the equator.

Which US president popularised the nickname 'Snowmageddon' for a blizzard that shut federal offices?

Barack Obama used the word at a Democratic National Committee meeting in February 2010, days after the storm buried the capital. Bloggers had also floated 'Snowpocalypse'.

The Blizzard of '77 buried which New York city after gales swept loose snow off frozen Lake Erie?

Buffalo saw drifts up to 12 metres high, because Lake Erie had frozen over weeks earlier and gales blew the deep powder lying on its ice straight into the city.

Ulaanbaatar, the world's coldest national capital with a yearly mean near 0 °C, is in which country?

Mongolia's capital is so cold because it sits high up, hundreds of kilometres from any coast, under the wintertime Siberian anticyclone. It is also the coldest city of over a million people.

Which dormant Hawaiian volcano, the state's highest peak, is regularly capped with snow in winter?

Mauna Kea takes its name from its seasonal snowcap, on the usual reading of 'white mountain', and Hawaiian tradition makes its summit the home of Poliʻahu, the deity of snow.

Which winter precipitation causes ice storms, glazing roads and power lines as soon as it lands?

Freezing rain falls as liquid through a layer of sub-zero air, so each drop is supercooled and locks into glaze on whatever it touches, from branches to aircraft.

Which nickname is given to the bright spots that flank the Sun when ice crystals bend its light?

Sun dogs are called parhelia by scientists, and the plate-shaped crystals behind them usually drift high up in thin cirrus cloud.

Which nickname is given to the river of moist air flowing from Hawaii to North America's west coast?

The Pineapple Express was simply called a 'Hawaiian storm' until about 1980. Each low-pressure wave that rides along it brings another burst of heavy rain to the coast.

What do forecasters call a storm whose central pressure plunges at least 24 millibars in 24 hours?

A bomb cyclone owes its name to Bergen School meteorologists, who in the 1940s and 1950s began calling storms that grew ferociously over the sea 'bombs'. The process is bombogenesis.

Which warm, dry wind off the Rockies, called the 'snow eater', can strip a foot of snow in one day?

Chinook winds take their name from the Chinook people of the lower Columbia River, while the 'snow eater' label comes from the Blackfoot of the interior plains.

What is the loud boom and tremor called when waterlogged ground suddenly freezes and cracks?

A frost quake, or cryoseism, is often mistaken for a small earthquake. It tends to strike when the temperature plunges fast and there is too little snow to insulate the soil.

Which name is given to the tiny ice crystals that drift down from a clear sky in deep cold?

Diamond dust is also called clear-sky precipitation, because it forms as a cloud at ground level instead of falling from one overhead. It is seen most often in the polar regions.

Which rare formations are hollow cylinders that strong wind bowls along open ground like hay bales?

Snow rollers are often hollow because their inner layers, the first to form, are weak and thin. The wind must be strong enough to push them along but not to blow them apart.

The 1922 Knickerbocker Storm is named after which kind of Washington building, whose roof caved in?

A movie theatre, the largest in the city, gave way during an intermission when heavy, wet snow split its flat roof down the middle. The collapse killed 98 people.

Germany's craze for decorated gingerbread houses is credited to which Brothers Grimm fairy tale?

Hansel and Gretel stumble on a house made of bread with sugar decorations, and some researchers say German bakers began copying it in the early 1800s.

Which fried potato pancakes are eaten at Hanukkah to recall the miracle of the Temple oil?

Latkes were mostly made of cheese until the 19th century, when the potato reached Eastern Europe.

Which drink of whisky, honey, lemon and boiling water is a traditional nightcap for soothing a cold?

A hot toddy is known as hot whiskey in Ireland, and in parts of the American South it goes by the nickname southern cough syrup.

Which savoury pudding of sheep's offal, oatmeal and suet is the main course of a Burns supper?

Haggis owes its status as a national dish to Robert Burns's 1786 poem 'Address to a Haggis'. It is traditionally served with neeps and tatties and a dram of whisky.

Which British Christmas pastry, now full of fruit and spice, once contained beef, mutton or tongue?

Mince pies were once kept for feast days because their ingredients cost so much, and that habit is how they became tied to Christmas.

Which tall, domed Christmas bread from Milan is studded with raisins and candied citrus?

Panettone owes its tall dome to the baker Angelo Motta, who let the dough rise three times over almost 20 hours. Its name comes from Milanese dialect for a big loaf.

Which Nordic Christmas dish is dried whitefish soaked in lye until it turns soft and gelatinous?

Lutefisk literally means 'lye fish', and the caustic soak may have crept into the recipe by accident. The fish, usually cod, is rehydrated for days before it is eaten.

Which Alpine dish involves heating cheese and scraping the melted layer onto boiled potatoes?

Raclette began with cow herders, who softened their cheese beside the evening campfire on the way to mountain pastures and scraped it onto bread.

Which German city parades a giant stollen, its famous Christmas loaf, through town each Advent?

Dresden is reviving a stunt of 1730, when its ruler Augustus the Strong had bakers make a giant stollen to feed his guests. The modern loaf is cut up and sold for charity.

Which Arctic bird of prey, the species of Harry Potter's Hedwig, often hunts in broad daylight?

The snowy owl is a nomad, rarely nesting in the same spot from one year to the next, and it may not breed at all when lemmings are scarce.

Which Arctic whale's long spiral tusk is really an overgrown canine tooth packed with nerve endings?

The narwhal's tusk grows from the left side of the upper jaw in males and can reach three metres. It is sensitive enough to detect changes in the temperature of the water.

Which big cat of Asia's high mountains uses its thick, fat-storing tail as a blanket over its face?

The snow leopard's tail can be about a metre long, and its small rounded ears and broad paws are further adaptations to life in the cold.

Eastern North America's monarch butterflies fly thousands of kilometres to winter in which country?

Mexico's oyamel fir forests, high on volcanic mountains, shelter the roosting butterflies until March. The generation that flies south lives far longer than its parents did.

Which insects survive winter by huddling around their queen and shivering to keep her warm?

Honey bees stop flying below about 10 °C and crowd into a winter cluster, where the workers' shivering keeps the centre at 27 °C or warmer.

Which monkeys, the world's northernmost, warm up in winter in the hot springs of Jigokudani?

Japanese macaques only took up the bathing habit in the 1960s, when they were encouraged to gather at the springs to keep them from raiding local crops.

Which seabird migrates farther than any other animal, from the far north to the Antarctic and back?

The Arctic tern sees more daylight than any other creature on the planet, because its round trip delivers it to each polar region in time for the bright season.

Which name is given to a stoat in its pure winter coat, long used to trim ceremonial robes?

Ermine has long trimmed the ceremonial robes of Britain's House of Lords, yet in North America the same animal goes by the plainer name of short-tailed weasel.

Qiviut, a wool warmer than sheep's and softer than cashmere, comes from which Arctic animal?

The musk ox is never sheared: its qiviut is plucked during the spring moult or gathered from objects the animals have brushed against.

Which far-northern hibernator lets its core temperature drop below 0 °C, the coldest of any mammal?

The Arctic ground squirrel chills its core to about −3 °C while its brain stays just above zero, and its heart slows to roughly one beat a minute.

Pipes can burst in a hard freeze because water, unlike most liquids, does what as it turns to ice?

Water expands by about 9% as it turns solid, with enough force to split rock. Miners have even poured water into drill holes in cold weather as a substitute for dynamite.

Which nutrient, made when sunlight hits the skin, do people at high latitudes often lack in winter?

Vitamin D levels in the blood can be a third to a half lower by the end of winter. For most people the skin, not food, is the main source of it.

Seeing your breath on a frosty morning shows the water vapour you exhale undergoing which change?

Condensation happens because exhaled air is almost saturated with water vapour at body temperature, so cold air turns it at once into a mist of tiny droplets.

Spreading salt on icy winter roads works because the dissolving salt does what to the ice?

Salt on ice lowers its melting point, so the road stays wet at temperatures that would otherwise turn it slick again. The same effect keeps seawater liquid below 0 °C.

Snow keeps an igloo warm and shelters animals under drifts because it is full of pockets of what?

Trapped air turns snow into an insulator, so the inside of a snow house stays relatively warm. Plants and small animals get through winter under the same blanket.

Water freezes at 0 on the Celsius scale and 32 on Fahrenheit, but at 273.15 on which scale?

Kelvin honours William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, who proposed an absolute temperature scale in 1848. Its zero marks the coldest that anything can possibly get.

Which process lets snow slowly vanish in sub-zero air by turning straight from solid into vapour?

Sublimation of snow and ice is gradual, but dry ice, which is solid carbon dioxide, does the same thing rapidly at room temperature.

Which tissue, plentiful in newborn babies and hibernating mammals, makes heat without shivering?

Brown fat makes up about 5% of a newborn's body mass, packed along the upper spine and shoulders. Babies depend on it because they are not yet able to shiver.

Which term describes the reflectivity that lets fresh snow bounce back about 90% of sunlight?

Albedo comes from the Latin for whiteness and runs from 0 to 1: fresh snow scores about 0.9, while charcoal, one of the darkest substances, manages just 0.04.

Which phenomenon, named after a schoolboy who spotted it making ice cream, sees hot liquid freeze before cold?

The Mpemba effect is named after Erasto Mpemba, who noticed in a 1963 cookery class that his hot ice cream mix froze before a cold one. Experiments with water still give mixed results.

The rolled sponge cake called bûche de Noël is decorated to look like which Christmas object?

A Yule log cake gets its bark from a fork dragged through the icing, while a dusting of powdered sugar stands in for snow.

A reindeer's eyes shine gold in the bright months but turn which colour in the dark Arctic winter?

Blue is the winter colour of the reflective layer behind a reindeer's retina, a seasonal shift thought to sharpen its vision through months of continuous darkness.