49 Fun Facts About Winter Trivia for Kids

Which months make up winter in the Northern Hemisphere?

December, January, February: those are the north's coldest months, while the seasons flip south of the equator, so Australians can spend Christmas at the beach.

What is special about the winter solstice?

It is the shortest day of the year: the Sun takes its lowest, shortest path across the sky, and from then on the days slowly start to lengthen again.

Under a microscope, the simplest snow crystals turn out to be which flat shape?

Hexagon: water molecules lock together in a six-sided pattern as they freeze, which is why almost every snow crystal that branches grows six arms.

Vermont farmer Wilson Bentley spent his winters from 1885 photographing thousands of what?

Snowflakes: he fixed a bellows camera to a microscope and photographed each flake before it could melt, which earned him the nickname Snowflake Bentley.

Ice is clear, so why does snow look white?

It scatters all colours of light: sunlight bounces off countless tiny crystal faces, and the colours mixed together look white, though very deep snow can look blue.

At what temperature does fresh water freeze into ice?

0 degrees Celsius, or 32 Fahrenheit, is where fresh water turns to ice; the salt in seawater means the ocean has to get about two degrees colder before it freezes.

Why does ice float on a pond instead of sinking?

It is less dense than liquid water: water swells by about 9 percent as it freezes, which is also why frozen pipes can burst.

Which hibernating animal gives birth in the middle of its long winter sleep?

Black bear mothers give birth without leaving the den, and the cubs stay tucked in there with her until spring.

What happens to a snowshoe hare's brown summer fur when winter comes?

It turns white, so the hare all but vanishes against the snow; the tips of its ears stay dark all year round.

What colour is a polar bear's skin under all that fur?

Black skin lies under fur that is not really white at all: each hair is see-through and hollow, with no pigment in it.

Which is the only penguin species that breeds during the freezing Antarctic winter?

Emperor penguin fathers balance the single egg on their feet for more than two months of winter darkness, eating nothing at all until the mothers return from the sea.

Which small northern hunter trails polar bears in winter to feed on their leftovers?

The Arctic fox normally hunts lemmings and other rodents, but when winter prey runs short it follows polar bears and eats the scraps from their kills.

An igloo stays warm inside because snow is full of what?

Trapped air pockets make packed snow a good insulator, so body heat and a small oil lamp can keep the inside above freezing while the Arctic air outside is far colder.

Which young artist built a snow statue for a Medici ruler in 1494?

Michelangelo, aged 18, made the snow statue for Piero de' Medici, and the commission brought the young sculptor back into the Medici household.

In the song, what brings Frosty the Snowman to life?

A magic silk hat does the trick. The song was written in 1950 as a follow-up to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and the same singer, Gene Autry, recorded both.

In 2007 a record 8,962 people gathered on North Dakota's capitol grounds to make what at the same moment?

Snow angels: North Dakota was winning back its own record. A university crowd in another state had taken it the year before, so this time more than twice as many people turned out.

Where were the very first Winter Olympic Games held, in 1924?

Chamonix, France, staged what was billed as an International Winter Sports Week; only afterwards was it declared to have been the first Winter Olympic Games.

Which winter sport, grown from a 1960s invention called the Snurfer, joined the Olympics at Nagano in 1998?

Snowboarding was long unwelcome at ski resorts: skiers spent years trying to keep boarders off their mountains before nearly every resort, and then the Olympics, let them in.

In the sport of curling, what do players slide across the ice towards the target?

Granite stones: the rock for Olympic stones comes from Ailsa Craig, a tiny island whose unusually dense granite can take decades of knocks on the ice.

What is a hockey puck made of?

Vulcanized rubber has long been the standard, but the first players on ice simply chased a ball until the flat puck replaced it.

The machine that smooths the ice at a skating rink is named after which inventor?

Frank Zamboni owned a rink in California where cleaning the ice took a crew of workers more than an hour, so he spent years building a machine that let one driver do the job.

The famous Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska finishes in which town?

Nome is the finish, and there is a prize even for coming last: a lamp on the finish arch stays lit until the final musher arrives to collect the Red Lantern award.

What causes the northern lights?

Charged particles from the Sun hitting the atmosphere make its gases glow, oxygen mostly green; Earth's magnetic field funnels them toward the poles, so the far north gets the best show.

In US forecasts, a snowstorm with 35 mph winds and almost no visibility for three hours is officially called what?

A blizzard is defined by wind and visibility, not by how much snow falls: strong winds whipping up snow already on the ground can count, with no new flakes at all.

In a whiteout, what can a person caught outside no longer tell apart?

Ground and sky blur into one blank white because the horizon vanishes, leaving nothing to steer by, which is why forecasters tell drivers to stay put.

On Groundhog Day, what does it supposedly mean if the groundhog sees its shadow?

Six more weeks of winter is the legend, but when US government weather scientists checked the groundhog's forecasts against real temperatures, he was right well under half the time.

Which parts of the body does frostbite usually attack first?

Fingers, toes, nose and ears are hit first, and the old trick of rubbing them warm is wrong: doctors say rubbing frostbitten skin only damages it more.

The world's first ice hotel is rebuilt from snow and ice every winter in which country?

Sweden's Icehotel at Jukkasjärvi is rebuilt each winter from ice blocks cut out of the Torne River, and every spring it melts and runs back into the same river.

The Yeti, also called the Abominable Snowman, is a legendary creature said to live in which mountains?

The Himalayas are its home in Sherpa stories, and the legend spread after climbers reported strange footprints in the snow there; the word yeti itself comes from a Sherpa name.

Reindeer are unusual among deer because of what?

Females can grow antlers too, and they keep them all winter after the big males have shed theirs, so an antlered reindeer pulling a sleigh at Christmas is probably female.

Which butterflies escape the northern winter by flying thousands of miles south to Mexico?

Monarchs spend the winter clustered on fir trees high in the mountains of central Mexico, and no single butterfly makes the round trip: it takes several generations to work back north.

Which ancient people made a frothy, bitter chocolate drink long before sweet cocoa existed?

The Maya mixed ground cacao with water into a bitter drink, often spiced with chili, and poured it from one vessel to another to raise the foam, which was the prized part.

An auger, a giant hand-cranked or motor-driven corkscrew, is the key tool of which winter pastime?

Ice fishing starts with a hole through the ice, and an auger is the usual tool for drilling it, though a simple chisel can chop one as well.

Which North American animal survives winter frozen nearly solid, with no heartbeat, then thaws out in spring?

The wood frog spends winter under the leaf litter with its breathing and heartbeat stopped, protected by a natural antifreeze in its cells, and hops away when the weather warms.

Igloos were traditionally built by which people?

The Inuit built snow igloos as winter homes and hunters' shelters, but in their own language iglu simply means 'house', whether it is made of snow, sod or wood.

Curling's first written record, from the 1500s, comes from which country?

Scotland: in Paisley a notary wrote down a challenge between a monk from the abbey and a rival, to be settled out on the ice, and the game's written history begins with his note.

As of 2026, which country has hosted the Winter Olympics most often?

The United States has hosted four Winter Games, in 1932, 1960, 1980 and 2002; when California's Squaw Valley was awarded the 1960 Games, little stood there but a lodge and a ski lift.

Where do most people believe skiing began, before it spread around the world?

Cave paintings in Asia's Altai Mountains suggest people may have skied there 10,000 years ago too.

Buffalo, New York, gets buried in snow when icy winds pick up moisture crossing which waters?

The Great Lakes stay unfrozen and fairly warm well into winter, so cold air sweeping across them soaks up warmth and moisture and dumps it as 'lake-effect' snow on the far shore.

The 'aurora' in aurora borealis, the northern lights, is the name of the Roman goddess of what?

The dawn: Aurora was Rome's goddess of daybreak, so aurora borealis means 'northern dawn'; Galileo, who used the name in 1619, wrongly thought the glow was sunlight reflected from high in the sky.

In 2008 the people of Bethel, Maine, spent a month building a record 122-foot what?

A snowwoman named Olympia, after Maine's senator Olympia Snowe: in nine years nobody had beaten the town's own 1999 record snowman, so Bethel topped it itself.

Which Winter Olympic sport makes cross-country skiers stop, steady their breathing and shoot at targets?

Biathlon punishes every missed target with extra time or a penalty lap, so racers must calm a pounding heart before they shoot; the sport grew out of military ski patrols.

A walrus's long tusks are really giant versions of which kind of tooth?

Canines: a walrus's tusks are overgrown upper canine teeth, found on males and females alike, and it uses them like ice axes to haul its huge body out of the water.

Long icicles hanging from a roof often mean that snow up there is being melted by what?

Heat leaking from the house melts snow on the roof; the water runs down to the cold edge, drips and refreezes, so a fringe of icicles can be a sign of a poorly insulated attic.

Which US state is nicknamed 'the Mitten State' because of its shape on a map?

Michigan's mitten shape is so familiar that residents hold up a hand and point to where they live on it, and the bulge on its eastern side is known as the Thumb.

In which country did students write the first rules of ice hockey, for teams of nine players a side?

Canada: students at McGill University in Montreal drew up the rules by borrowing from field hockey and rugby, and teams have since shrunk from nine skaters a side to today's six.

Snowshoes keep a person on top of deep snow by doing what?

Spreading their weight over a wide frame stops each step sinking in, and European fur traders took up the snowshoes Indigenous peoples had long worn so that they too could travel in winter.

Which seabird dodges winter altogether by flying from the top of the world to the bottom and back each year?

The Arctic tern nests in the far north, then follows the sun to Antarctic waters for a second summer, the longest migration of any animal; no creature sees more daylight in a year.

Earth has seasons because it is tilted on its axis by roughly how much?

About 23 degrees: that lean, not distance, makes winter, since Earth is actually closest to the Sun during the northern winter, when the north is tipped away and sunlight strikes it at a low slant.