Winter is more than cold weather, and this quiz covers the whole season in 150 free questions with answers: why the Earth has seasons at all, what makes a snowflake six-sided, the coldest temperature ever recorded, the animals that freeze solid or sleep through it, and the winter solstice festivals people have kept for thousands of years, from Stonehenge and Yaldā to Hanukkah and Chinese New Year. There is also the fun side: Groundhog Day, the tallest snowman ever built, curling stones and bobsleighs, the Iditarod, Frozen, Narnia, The Shining, Fargo and the heatwave that produced 'Let It Snow'. Roughly a third of the questions are easy enough for kids and classrooms, and the rest climb to winter trivia for adults, the sort of records and history that settle a pub-quiz round. Every answer has been checked against a documented source and each question shows its citation and a short explanation after you answer.
30 of 150 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01When it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, what season is it in the Southern Hemisphere?
Summer
Australians and South Africans eat Christmas dinner in midsummer, and their meteorological winter runs June to August.
Q 02Meteorologists in the Northern Hemisphere count winter as which three months?
December, January and February
Astronomers start it later, at the December solstice, and run it to the March equinox.
Q 03What causes the seasons, including winter?
The tilt of Earth's axis
The axis leans 23.44 degrees from the plane of the orbit, so each hemisphere takes turns pointing away from the Sun.
Q 04Earth is actually closest to the Sun (perihelion) during which month?
January
It happens about two weeks after the December solstice, in the depths of the northern winter, which is why distance is not what makes winter cold.
Q 05On which dates does the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere fall?
21 or 22 December
The Sun is at its lowest arc in the sky; Newgrange in Ireland is aligned to its sunrise and Stonehenge to its sunset.
Q 06Newgrange in Ireland and Stonehenge in England are both aligned to the sunrise or sunset of which day?
The winter solstice
Newgrange points to the solstice sunrise and Stonehenge to the solstice sunset, both built thousands of years before written calendars.
Q 07Snow crystals grow with six-fold symmetry because of what?
The hexagonal structure of ice
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.
Q 08How wide does Guinness list the largest snowflakes ever reported, at Fort Keogh, Montana, in 1887?
38 cm (15 in)
They were aggregates of many crystals stuck together, and the claim rests on the word of a ranch owner, but Guinness accepted it.
Q 09Who, from 1885, photographed thousands of snowflakes through a microscope, showing their variety?
Wilson Bentley
The Vermont farmer, nicknamed Snowflake Bentley, worked in an unheated shed so his subjects would not melt.
Q 10Earth's lowest directly recorded air temperature, -89.2 °C, was measured in 1983 where?
Vostok Station, Antarctica
Satellites have since seen surface temperatures near -98 °C on the East Antarctic plateau, but those readings do not count as official records.
Q 11At what temperature do the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales read the same number?
-40
It is the one point where a Canadian and an American can agree on how cold it is without converting.
Q 12Paul Siple and Charles Passel devised the first wind chill formulas while stationed where?
Antarctica
They measured how fast a bottle of water froze in the wind; the index adopted by Canada, the US and the UK dates from 2001.
Q 13Inside the Arctic and Antarctic circles, what is the period when the Sun stays below the horizon over 24 hours called?
Polar night
At the poles themselves it lasts about half a year; in Tromsø, Norway, it runs from mid-November to mid-January.
Q 21Which is the only penguin that breeds during the Antarctic winter, with males incubating an egg on their feet?
Emperor penguin
Males balance the egg on their feet through the dark for more than two months, huddling in their hundreds against the wind.
Q 22Reindeer are unique among deer because of what?
Females may grow antlers
In North America the same species is called caribou; herds there make some of the longest land migrations of any mammal.
Q 23St Bernard dogs were originally bred for what job in the Alps?
Rescue work
Q 14The 'borealis' in aurora borealis comes from the name of the ancient Greek god of what?
The north wind
Aurora was the Roman goddess of dawn, and Galileo was already using the term in 1619; the southern lights are the aurora australis.
Q 15Roughly what fraction of an iceberg's volume floats above the water?
About one-tenth
That follows from Archimedes and the density of ice, and it is where the phrase 'tip of the iceberg' comes from.
Q 16Pink 'watermelon snow' seen on mountains and glaciers is caused by what?
An alga with a red pigment
Chlamydomonas nivalis is a green alga that makes a red carotenoid; Aristotle wrote about the phenomenon more than 2,000 years ago.
Q 17Which is the only bird species known to hibernate?
The common poorwill
Most birds migrate instead; some ground squirrels take hibernation further, cooling their bodies to below freezing for weeks.
Q 18Which amphibian survives winter frozen solid and is North America's only one found north of the Arctic Circle?
The wood frog
It stops breathing and its heart stops beating, then thaws out in spring and hops off.
Q 19Female bears do what during their winter dormancy?
Give birth to their cubs
Cubs are born blind, nearly hairless and tiny, and nurse in the den until spring.
Q 20The snowshoe hare's coat changes from brown in the warm months to what in winter?
White
Its oversized hind feet act like snowshoes, which is where the name comes from.
The most famous, Barry, is credited with saving at least 40 lives; the brandy barrel around the neck is a myth traced to an 1820 painting.
Q 24In Greek myth, Demeter lets the earth go barren each winter because her daughter must spend that time where?
In the underworld with Hades
Persephone was tricked into eating pomegranate seeds, which bound her to a third of every year below.
Q 25In Russia, gifts at New Year are brought by Ded Moroz, whose name translates as what?
Grandfather Frost
He travels with his granddaughter Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden, and officially lives in the town of Veliky Ustyug.
Q 26According to tradition, what happens if the groundhog sees its shadow on February 2?
Six more weeks of winter
Punxsutawney Phil has been consulted at Gobbler's Knob since 1887, but he was not given the name Phil until 1961.
Q 27Hanukkah lasts for how many nights?
Eight
It begins on the 25th of Kislev, and the menorah holds nine lights: one for each night plus the shamash that lights the others.
Q 28Chinese New Year always begins on a new moon that falls between which two dates?
21 January and 20 February
The celebrations run for 15 days to the Lantern Festival, and each year takes one of 12 zodiac animals.
Q 29The Iranian festival of Yaldā, the longest and darkest night of the year, marks which event?
The winter solstice
Families stay up late eating pomegranates and watermelon and reading the poetry of Hafez.
Q 30Which snowman, 122 feet tall and built in Bethel, Maine, in 2008, holds the record for the tallest ever?
Olympia
She was named after Maine senator Olympia Snowe and had skis for eyelashes and truck tyres for buttons.