195 Fun Facts About Winter

When it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, what season is it in the Southern Hemisphere?

Australians and South Africans eat Christmas dinner in midsummer, and their meteorological winter runs June to August.

Meteorologists in the Northern Hemisphere count winter as which three 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 axis leans 23.44 degrees from the plane of the orbit, so each hemisphere takes turns pointing away from the Sun.

Earth is actually closest to the Sun (perihelion) during which month?

Perihelion falls in early January, around 3 January, about two weeks after the December solstice, which is why Earth-Sun distance is not what makes northern winters cold.

The winter solstice, the Northern Hemisphere's shortest day, when the Sun traces its lowest arc, falls on which dates?

The winter solstice falls on 21 or 22 December, when the noon Sun is lowest in the Northern Hemisphere sky; the exact date shifts with the leap-year cycle.

Newgrange in Ireland and Stonehenge in England are both aligned to the sunrise or sunset of which day?

Newgrange points to the solstice sunrise and Stonehenge to the solstice sunset, both built thousands of years before written calendars.

Snow crystals grow with six-fold symmetry because of what?

Every flake starts on a speck of dust and grows differently on its way down, which is why finding two identical ones is so unlikely.

How wide does Guinness list the largest snowflakes ever reported, at Fort Keogh, Montana, in 1887?

Guinness lists them at 38 cm (15 in) wide and 20 cm (8 in) thick, reported by rancher Matt Coleman at Fort Keogh on 28 January 1887; the claim rests on his word alone.

Who, from 1885, photographed thousands of snowflakes through a microscope, showing their variety?

The Vermont farmer, nicknamed Snowflake Bentley, worked in an unheated shed so his subjects would not 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.

Paul Siple and Charles Passel devised the first wind chill formulas while stationed where?

Siple and Passel worked at Little America in Antarctica in 1940, timing how fast water froze in a plastic cylinder exposed to the wind; the revised index used by Canada and the US dates from 2001.

Inside the Arctic and Antarctic circles, what is the period when the Sun stays below the horizon over 24 hours called?

Polar night is the stretch without a sunrise; at the poles themselves it lasts about half a year, while in Tromsø, Norway, it runs from late November to mid-January.

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

Boreas was the Greek god of the north wind, so aurora borealis means 'northern dawn'; Aurora was the Roman goddess of dawn, and the southern lights are the aurora australis.

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

About one-tenth: ice is roughly 0.92 times as dense as seawater, so about 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?

Chlamydomonas nivalis is a green alga that makes a red carotenoid; Aristotle wrote about the phenomenon more than 2,000 years ago.

Which is the only bird species known to hibernate?

The common poorwill, a nightjar of western North America, can stay torpid for weeks in winter with its body temperature near 5 °C; its Hopi name means 'the sleeping one'.

Which amphibian survives winter frozen solid and is North America's only one found north of the Arctic Circle?

The wood frog floods its blood with glucose as an antifreeze, so up to two-thirds of its body water can freeze solid; its heart and breathing stop until the spring thaw.

Female bears do what during their winter dormancy?

Cubs are born blind, nearly hairless and tiny, and nurse in the den until spring.

The snowshoe hare's coat changes from brown in the warm months to what in winter?

It turns white, hiding it against snow; the moult is triggered by shortening days, and its oversized hind feet act like snowshoes, which is where the name comes from.

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

Emperor penguins are the only penguins that breed in the Antarctic winter; males balance the single egg on their feet for more than two months, huddling in their hundreds against the wind.

Reindeer are unique among deer because of what?

Reindeer are the only deer in which females may grow antlers; in North America the species is called caribou, and its herds make some of the longest land migrations of any mammal.

St Bernard dogs were originally bred for what job in the Alps?

Rescue work was the job: the most famous St Bernard, Barry, is credited with saving at least 40 lives, while the brandy barrel round the neck is a myth traced to an 1820 painting.

In Greek myth, Demeter lets the earth go barren each winter because her daughter must spend that time where?

Persephone must spend part of each year in the underworld with Hades: she ate pomegranate seeds there, which bound her to return below for a third of every year.

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

Ded means grandfather and moroz means frost, so he is Grandfather Frost; he travels with his granddaughter Snegurochka and officially lives in Veliky Ustyug.

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

A shadow means six more weeks of winter; Punxsutawney Phil has been consulted at Gobbler's Knob since 1887, though he was not given the name Phil until 1961.

Hanukkah lasts for how many nights?

Hanukkah lasts eight nights, beginning on the 25th of Kislev; the hanukkiah holds nine lights, one for each of the eight nights plus the shamash that lights the others.

Chinese New Year always begins on a new moon that falls between which two dates?

It falls between 21 January and 20 February, usually the second new moon after the December solstice; celebrations run 15 days to the Lantern Festival, and each year takes one of 12 zodiac animals.

Which snowman, 122 feet tall and built in Bethel, Maine, in 2008, holds the record for the tallest ever?

She was named after Maine senator Olympia Snowe and had skis for eyelashes and truck tyres for buttons.

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

Michelangelo, then a teenager, built it in the Medici courtyard after a heavy January 1494 snowfall, as Vasari records; no drawing of it survives.

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

Norway leads the all-time medal table, and since 1994 the winter and summer games have been held two years apart.

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

Norway tops the all-time Winter Olympics medal table with more than 400 medals, ahead of the United States and Germany; no Winter Games have ever been held in the Southern Hemisphere.

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

Scotland's Ailsa Craig, a granite plug in the Firth of Clyde, supplies the stones; its Blue Hone granite absorbs almost no water, so it resists the freeze-thaw cracking that ruins other rock.

The sport of bobsleigh got its name from what?

The first sleds were built by British tourists in St. Moritz in the late 1800s, and four-man bobsleigh was in the very first Winter Olympics.

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 it across the finish line, a moment the film turned into its climax.

In the sliding sport of skeleton, what position does the rider take on the sled?

Riders lie face down and head first, steering with shoulder and knee shifts; the sport began on the Cresta Run at St. Moritz and became a permanent Olympic event only in 2002.

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?

Skíð in Old Norse meant 'cleft wood', a split length of timber; the Kalvträsk ski found in northern Sweden is about 5,200 years old.

The first machine for resurfacing ice rinks was built in 1949 by Frank Zamboni in which US state?

Frank Zamboni ran the Iceland rink in Paramount, California, near Los Angeles, and built his Model A in 1949 so he no longer had to close the rink for an hour each time the ice needed smoothing.

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

Nome, on the Bering Sea coast, is the finish; the race began in 1973 and covers close to 1,000 miles along the old Iditarod freight and mail trail.

Which Japanese city, averaging over five metres of snow a year, is called the world's snowiest?

Aomori, at the northern tip of Honshu, averages about eight metres of snow a year as cold winds off the Sea of Japan dump moisture on it; in February 1945 the snow lay 209 cm deep.

The single-season snowfall record, 1,140 inches, was set in 1999 at a ski area on which mountain?

Mount Baker Ski Area in Washington recorded 1,140 inches in the 1998-99 season, about 29 metres, beating the 1,122 inches measured at Paradise on Mount Rainier in 1971-72.

Frost fairs were held on the frozen River Thames in London between which years?

The first recorded fair was in 1608 and the last in 1814, during the Little Ice Age; old London Bridge's narrow arches slowed the river enough to freeze, and its 1831 replacement ended that.

The Great Blizzard of March 1888 helped persuade New York City to make which change to its infrastructure?

Bury its telegraph lines and build a subway: after up to 58 inches of snow fell and around 400 people died, New York moved its telegraph and telephone lines underground, and its first subway opened in 1904.

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

The name refers to the direction its winds blow from, the northeast; the storms typically develop within 100 miles of the coast between Georgia and New Jersey and are most violent from September to April.

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

Finnish troops, nearly all trained on skis, held off a far larger army for three and a half months before the Moscow Peace Treaty.

In which year did the Christmas Truce on the Western Front take place?

The truce came in 1914, the war's first Christmas, when about 100,000 British and German troops joined unofficial ceasefires; later Christmases brought orders and artillery barrages to prevent a repeat.

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

The Snow Queen, published by Andersen in 1844, gave Frozen its starting point; the film won Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for Let It Go.

Who provides the voice of Olaf the snowman in Frozen?

Josh Gad voices Olaf and reprised the role in Frozen II; Idina Menzel voices Elsa and Kristen Bell Anna, while Jennifer Lee became the first woman to direct a Walt Disney Animation Studios feature.

In C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the White Witch has kept Narnia in what state?

She has made it always winter and never Christmas, a perpetual winter lasting a hundred years; she wins Edmund over with Turkish delight, and the book was published in 1950.

In Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, 'Winter' is the concerto in which key?

Winter is in F minor (RV 297), with Spring in E major, Summer in G minor and Autumn in F major; the set was published in Amsterdam in 1725, each concerto paired with a sonnet.

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

The Overlook Hotel, closed for winter in the Colorado Rockies, drives Jack mad; the film ends with him frozen in the hedge maze and a 1921 photograph that raises more questions than it answers.

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

Fargo, set in a snowbound Minnesota winter, won McDormand Best Actress and the Coen brothers Best Original Screenplay; the wood chipper became the film's most notorious prop.

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 early chocolate as a cold, foamy drink flavoured with which spice?

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

Britain's 'Stir-up Sunday', for making Christmas pudding, falls how many Sundays before Christmas?

It is the last Sunday before Advent, five Sundays before Christmas, named after the collect beginning 'Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord'; silver sixpences were once stirred into the mix for luck.

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

Jukkasjärvi is in Sweden, in Lapland near Kiruna, 200 km north of the Arctic Circle; the hotel grew out of an ice-art exhibition when visitors asked to sleep in the gallery, and is rebuilt from Torne River ice yearly.

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

Quebec City's Carnaval has run every year since 1955, with an ice palace for Bonhomme and a canoe race across the half-frozen St. Lawrence.

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

Harbin, in China's far north-east, has held its International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival since 1985, building palaces from blocks two to three feet thick cut from the frozen Songhua River.

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

The summit observatory still markets itself as the home of the world's worst weather.

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

Nanook is usually called the first feature-length documentary, and it was a commercial hit worldwide; Flaherty staged several scenes, such as the walrus hunt, so it is often labelled a docudrama.

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

Arthur DeVries isolated them in 1969 from Antarctic notothenioid fish, which swim in seawater at -1.9 °C, colder than the freezing point of their own blood.

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 partly melted snow; in the United States the word means ice pellets, frozen raindrops that bounce on impact.

A US blizzard, by National Weather Service definition, needs winds of at least what speed?

The NWS threshold is sustained winds or frequent gusts of 35 mph or more, with visibility down to a quarter mile or less for at least three hours; no minimum snowfall is required.

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

A slab avalanche releases when a cohesive layer of packed snow fractures along a buried weak layer such as surface hoar; loose snow avalanches instead start from a point and fan out.

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

Warmer open water is the engine: cold air crossing long expanses of warmer lake water picks up moisture and drops it as snow downwind, as on northern Japan's west coast too.

Ground must stay below 0 °C for at least how long to count as permafrost?

Permafrost is ground that stays at or below 0 °C for at least two consecutive years; the oldest known, in Canada's Yukon, has been frozen for around 700,000 years.

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 in winter for camouflage; it is the official bird of Nunavut and, as the raicho, of Toyama, Gifu and Nagano prefectures in Japan.

How many times a year does the Arctic fox shed its coat?

Twice: it moults in spring to a brown-grey summer coat and again in autumn to the thick white winter coat, with fur covering even the pads of its feet.

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

Figure skating was the first winter sport on the Olympic programme, at London 1908 with four events: men's singles, ladies' singles, pairs and men's special figures.

Where was the first indoor ice hockey game played, on March 3, 1875?

It was played at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink, organised by James Creighton; the Stanley Cup was first awarded in 1893 to Canada's amateur champion.

Under what name was the Stanley Cup commissioned in 1892?

Lord Stanley of Preston donated it in 1892 as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup, a silver bowl bought in London for ten guineas; it was first awarded in 1893.

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

Riders lie face up and feet first, steering with leg pressure and shoulder shifts, while skeleton riders go face down and head first.

Luge events were first included in the Winter Olympics in which year?

Luge debuted at Innsbruck 1964 with men's singles, women's singles and doubles; the United States Luge Association was not founded until 1979.

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

The K-point is the target line in the landing area, the hill's construction point; reaching it scores 60 distance points, plus or minus 1.8 per metre on a large hill.

Snowboarding became a Winter Olympic sport at which Games?

Snowboarding debuted at Nagano 1998 with giant slalom and halfpipe; Canada's Ross Rebagliati won the first gold and briefly lost it over a cannabis test before it was restored.

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

His wife Nancy coined Snurfer from 'snow' and 'surfer' in 1965; Brunswick licensed it and sold about a million over the following decade.

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 ski racing has been part of the Winter Olympics since which year?

Alpine skiing joined at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936 with a single combined event of downhill and slalom for men and women; separate downhill and slalom medals followed in 1948.

Which new event debuted at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics?

Ski mountaineering, or skimo, made its debut with men's and women's sprints and a mixed relay; the Games were the first under IOC president Kirsty Coventry, who took office in June 2025.

Which joint bid lost out to Milan–Cortina for the 2026 Winter Olympics?

Stockholm–Åre lost by 47 votes to 34 at the IOC session in Lausanne on 24 June 2019; Calgary and Sapporo had withdrawn from the race earlier.

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 crossed which river to invade Russia in June 1812?

The Grande Armée crossed the Neman near Kaunas on 24 June 1812; of some 600,000 men who entered Russia, only a few tens of thousands came back through the winter retreat.

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

Valley Forge, about 20 miles from Philadelphia, housed some 12,000 troops from 19 December 1777 to 19 June 1778; roughly 2,000 died of disease, and Baron von Steuben drilled the survivors.

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 on Sumbawa, Indonesia, erupted in April 1815 in the largest eruption in recorded history; global temperatures fell by 0.4–0.7 °C, hitting New England and Western Europe hardest.

The Great Frost of 1709 was the coldest European winter in roughly how many years?

It was Europe's coldest winter in roughly 500 years; the Venice lagoon froze, and the famine that followed in France caused an estimated 600,000 deaths.

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?

Endurance was frozen into the Weddell Sea pack in January 1915 and crushed that November; a second ship, Aurora, carried the expedition's Ross Sea party on the other side of the continent.

Saint Lucy's Day, marked in Sweden with candle crowns, falls on which day of December?

Lucia wears a white dress and a red sash symbolizing her martyrdom.

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?

26 December is the feast of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, the day Good King Wenceslas 'looked out'; the name Boxing Day may derive from church alms boxes opened for the poor.

Twelfth Night marks the end of Christmastide and 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 principally marks in the West, as Jesus Christ's physical manifestation to the Gentiles; Eastern Christians know the feast as Theophany.

Candlemas, on 2 February, commemorates what event?

Candlemas marks the presentation of Jesus at the Temple forty days after Christmas, as told in Luke 2:22–40, together with the purification of Mary; candles are blessed for the year.

Winterlude is a winter festival held in which Canadian capital region?

Winterlude has run in Ottawa–Gatineau every February since 1979, with skating on the Rideau Canal Skateway and ice sculptures in Confederation Park.

Which site, along with Susukino and Tsudome, hosts the Sapporo Snow Festival?

Odori Park, a 1.5 km strip through central Sapporo, hosts the largest sculptures; the festival began in 1950 when local students built six snow statues there.

Lohri, a bonfire festival celebrated in Punjab, usually falls on which day of January?

It is a harvest festival tied to Makar Sankranti.

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

The word for bean, mame, can be written as 'devil's eye'.

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?

Saint Brigid of Kildare's feast is 1 February, absorbing the pagan Imbolc that traditionally marks the beginning of spring; Ireland made it a public holiday from 2023.

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

His friend Polixenes is King of Bohemia.

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

Most of it was shot in Spain, with Moscow streets built outside Madrid and the snow scenes filmed near Soria using marble dust; the novel was banned in the Soviet Union.

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

Bing Crosby's version is the best-selling physical single ever, at over 50 million copies.

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.

Edith Wharton's wintry novella Ethan Frome is set in which fictional Massachusetts town?

Starkfield is the bleak, snowbound village of the 1911 novella; its climax is Ethan and Mattie's deliberate sled run into a great elm.

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

It is based partly on Michael Punke's 2002 novel about Glass's 1823 ordeal.

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

Luc Jacquet directed the film about emperor penguins.

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

Sid is a ground sloth, voiced by John Leguizamo; Manny is a woolly mammoth and Diego a smilodon, and it was Blue Sky Studios' debut feature.

Oymyakon, Earth's coldest permanently inhabited settlement, is in which Russian republic?

Oymyakon lies in the Sakha Republic, also called Yakutia, in eastern Siberia; it recorded -67.7 °C in 1933, and schools close only when it is colder than about -55 °C.

North America's record low temperature was set in 1947 at Snag, in which territory?

Snag, Yukon, recorded about -63 °C (-81 °F) on 3 February 1947, beating the 1910 reading from Fort Good Hope in the Northwest Territories.

Hypothermia is defined as a core body temperature below what?

Hypothermia begins below 35 °C (95 °F), with shivering giving way to confusion as the core cools; frostbite, by contrast, is tissue damage from freezing.

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

Autry had scored a seasonal hit with 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' the year before.

The 1925 serum run to Nome carried antitoxin for which disease?

Diphtheria antitoxin was relayed 674 miles from Nenana to Nome by 20 mushers and about 150 dogs in five and a half days, a run that made front-page news across the United States.

Which sled dog ran the longest and most dangerous leg of the 1925 serum run?

Togo's team covered 261 miles; Balto's ran only the final 55 miles.

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.

Igloos were traditionally used in Canada's Central Arctic and which area of Greenland?

Qaanaaq, in the Thule region of north-west Greenland, was the one Greenlandic area where snow houses were a winter norm; the Inuit word iglu simply means a house of any kind.

Arthur Sicard completed the first practical snow blower prototype in which year?

Sicard, from Quebec, finished his first practical snow blower in 1925 and sold the first production machine to Outremont in 1927; he had sketched the concept as early as 1894.

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

Bombardier was born in Valcourt, Quebec, where he built his first motorised sled in 1922 and launched the Ski-Doo in 1959; the brand name became a generic term for snowmobiles.

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?

The Swiss Cheese Union wanted to boost cheese consumption.

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

Löyly is Finnish, and originally meant spirit or breath as well as sauna steam; the oldest known saunas in Finland were pits dug into slopes.

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

Feuerzangenbowle sets a rum-soaked sugar cone, the Zuckerhut, alight on tongs over a bowl of Glühwein so the caramelising sugar drips in; a 1944 Heinz Rühmann film of that name made it a ritual.

According to the OED, 'nog' in eggnog was originally what?

The OED records nog as a strong beer brewed in East Anglia, attested from the 1690s; a rival theory ties eggnog to 'noggin', a small wooden mug used for serving drinks.

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

Glögg is ladled over raisins and blanched almonds in the cup; Swedish glögg is typically spiced with cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and ginger and sweetened with sugar.

The earliest known depiction of a snowman is in a Book of Hours from which year?

It is a marginal illustration in a Book of Hours held in The Hague.

Research suggests the earliest ice skating took place more than 4,000 years ago where?

A 2007 study by Federico Formenti and Alberto Minetti modelled that bone skates first paid off in lake-dense southern Finland over 4,000 years ago; 3,500-year-old bone skates have since been found in Xinjiang, China.

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

Possible sources include the Mi'kmaq tepaqan and Abenaki odabôgan.

Ded Moroz's granddaughter and helper, Snegurochka, 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, with the temperature at -13 °F (-25 °C) and Bart Starr's quarterback sneak winning 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 Romanovs' official residence from 1732 to 1917 and stormed by the Bolsheviks that October; Catherine the Great founded the collection in 1764.

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?

The soot would block direct sunlight from reaching Earth's surface.

Winter wheat needs vernalization, a cold period of what length, before it can head?

Winter wheat needs roughly 30 to 60 days near 0–5 °C before it will head; it is planted in autumn, overwinters as seedlings and resumes growth in early spring.

Which Austrian instrument-maker popularised the snow globe and won its first patent?

Erwin Perzy, a Viennese maker of surgical instruments, patented his Schneekugel in 1900 after trying to brighten a light bulb with a water-filled globe; his family's Vienna workshop remained in business into the 21st century.

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

Galanthus is Greek for milk flower, from gala (milk) and anthos (flower); Linnaeus named the genus in 1753, and it has around 20 species.

Which Alberta city's Deep Freeze Festival holds a chainsaw ice-carving contest?

Deep Freeze, billed as a Byzantine winter festival, takes over Edmonton's Alberta Avenue each January with ice carving, street hockey and outdoor fires.

Ski warfare was first recorded in the 13th century by a historian from which country?

Saxo Grammaticus described ski-equipped troops.

Which North American monument, like Stonehenge, aligns with the winter solstice?

Cahokia Woodhenge is a ring of red-cedar posts at the Mississippian city in Illinois; from its central post the winter solstice sunrise lines up with a marker post, as it does for the equinoxes and summer solstice.

In what year did Sweden's Icehotel, rebuilt every winter at Jukkasjärvi, first open?

The first guests slept in the ice gallery in the winter of 1990, the Icehotel's founding season; it stands about 17 kilometres from Kiruna and is rebuilt from Torne River ice each winter.

How thick did the ice on the Thames in London get during the Great Frost of 1683–84?

The ice reached 11 inches (28 cm) thick in London and the Thames stayed frozen for two months in the worst frost recorded in England; a frost fair with printing presses and ox-roasts was held on it.

A curling stone inscribed with which date was found when an old pond was drained at Dunblane, Scotland?

The 'Stirling Stone' is inscribed 1511 and is kept at the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum with a second stone dated 1551 and the world's oldest football, from about 1540.

Why is curling nicknamed 'the roaring game'?

The roar is the sound of the granite stones rumbling over the pebbled ice; the word curling first appeared in print in 1620, in a poem by Henry Adamson of Perth.

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.