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This snow trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the science and the culture of snow. There are questions on how snowflakes form and why they are six-sided, why snow looks white when ice is clear, record snowfalls from Mount Baker to Aomori, historic blizzards and avalanches, and snow in surprising places like the Sahara. Then it turns to snowmen (including the one Michelangelo built), snow globes, igloos, snow angels, skiing and snowboarding, and snow animals like the snow leopard and snowy owl. About a third of the questions are easy enough for a classroom or a snow-day family quiz, a third are medium, and the rest will test people who think they know winter. Nothing here is violent or adult. Every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Snow crystals form when tiny supercooled cloud droplets freeze around what?
Atmospheric particles
The droplets are only about 10 micrometres across; the crystals then grow by attracting more supercooled water.
Q 02Ice is clear, so why does snow look white?
Light scatters off the crystal facets and imperfections
Diffuse reflection sends every wavelength back out at once, which our eyes read as white.
Q 03How many sides does a classic snow crystal have?
Six
Water molecules lock together in a hexagonal lattice as they freeze, so the crystal grows six arms.
Q 04Roughly how many water molecules make up a typical snowflake?
Ten quintillion (10^19)
They are added to the core at different rates and in different patterns as the flake tumbles through changing conditions.
Q 05Which Vermont farmer began photographing snowflakes under a microscope in 1885, revealing their variety?
Wilson Bentley
He photographed thousands over his lifetime and was known as 'Snowflake' Bentley.
Q 06Which Japanese physicist created the diagram relating snow crystal shape to temperature and humidity?
Ukichiro Nakaya
He also discovered that whether the air is above or below saturation changes the shape.
Q 07Whose 1611 paper 'On the six-cornered snowflake' first stated a conjecture on stacking spheres?
Johannes Kepler
The Kepler conjecture was finally proved by Thomas Hales, with a formal proof completed in 2014.
Q 08The world's largest snowflake, 38 cm across per Guinness, fell in 1887 in which US state?
Montana
It was reported at Fort Keogh, near present-day Miles City; nobody photographed it.
Q 09The single-season snowfall record of 1,140 inches was set in 1998-99 at a ski area on which mountain?
Mount Baker, Washington
That is nearly 29 metres of snow in one winter.
Q 10Which Japanese city, at the northern tip of Honshu, is often ranked the snowiest city in the world?
Aomori
Sapporo and Toyama, also in Japan, round out the top three among large cities.
Q 11For how long must 35 mph winds and quarter-mile visibility persist for a US blizzard to be declared?
Three hours
Blizzard is a measure of wind and visibility, not how much snow falls.
Q 12Roughly what percentage of Earth's surface is covered by seasonal snow?
9%
Almost all of it is in the Northern Hemisphere, where most of the land is.
Q 13The Great Blizzard of 1888 helped push which city to build America's first underground subway?
Boston
Boston's opened in 1897; New York's first underground line followed in 1904.
Q 14How much snow fell in parts of the Northeast during the great blizzard of March 1888?
Q 21The world's tallest snow figure, a 122-foot snowwoman named Olympia, was built in 2008 in Bethel, in which state?
Maine
Her arms were spruce trees and her eyelashes were skis.
Q 22A North American snowman has three snowballs. How many are typical in the United Kingdom?
Two
One ball for the body, one for the head; Frosty's 1950 song helped popularise snowmen everywhere.
Q 23The Austrian who patented the snow globe, Erwin Perzy, was originally trying to build what?
A brighter surgical lamp
Reflective particles in a water-filled flask reminded him of snowfall, and his family still makes globes in Vienna.
10 to 58 inches
Drifts were reported covering three-storey houses.
Q 15Which type of avalanche accounts for around 90% of avalanche deaths?
Slab avalanches
They typically start on slopes of 30 to 45 degrees when a cohesive layer breaks away from a weak layer beneath.
Q 16Roughly how many soldiers on both sides died in Alpine avalanches in December 1916?
10,000
Some avalanches were triggered deliberately by artillery fire on the Italian front.
Q 17The deadliest avalanche in US history killed 96 people in 1910 in the town of Wellington in which state?
Washington
It swept two trains stranded at a railway depot in the Cascades into a ravine.
Q 18In which year did Aïn Séfra, 'the Gateway to the Sahara', first see recorded snow?
1979
It has since snowed there again in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2022, with a metre-deep blizzard in January 2017.
Q 19The earliest known depiction of a snowman appears in the margin of a Book of Hours dated to which year?
1380
The 1380 manuscript is held in The Hague.
Q 20Which Renaissance artist was commissioned by Piero de' Medici to build a snowman in 1494?
Michelangelo
He was 19 and living in the Medici household at the time.
Q 24Which 1941 film opens with its dying protagonist dropping a snow globe as he whispers 'Rosebud'?
Citizen Kane
The shattered globe sets up the fragmented, flashback structure of the whole film.
Q 25Why is snow a good building material for an igloo?
Trapped air pockets make it an insulator
Outside it may be −45 °C while inside ranges from −7 to 16 °C; wind-packed snow makes the best blocks.
Q 26In the Inuit languages, the word iglu can refer to what?
A home of any material
English narrowed the meaning to snow houses, which are only one kind of iglu.
Q 27On which US state's capitol grounds was the record for most simultaneous snow angels (8,962) set in 2007?
North Dakota
It beat the previous record of 3,784 set at Michigan Technological University.
Q 28The word 'ski' comes from an Old Norse word meaning what?
Split piece of wood
Skiing has a history of almost five millennia, and may go back further still in the Altai Mountains.
Q 29The first Winter Olympic Games were held in 1924 in which French town?
Chamonix
Norway leads the all-time Winter Olympic medal table, ahead of the United States and Germany.
Q 30Snowboarding became an official Olympic sport at which Winter Games?
Nagano 1998
Its ancestor, the Snurfer, was invented in 1965 by Sherm Poppen, who fastened two skis together as a toy for his daughters.