Interesting conversation I had with someone from a semi-warmer climate recently, as they visited: After seeing all the snow on the ground, they commented "wow it must snow all the time here". Me: "Well, we had that big winter storm, when was that, three weeks ago? I don't think its snowed much since then". You can see the gears turning as they come to the realization that snow doesn't, like, go anywhere. If it snows below freezing, that snow stays on the ground. It doesn't melt. The city can move it to more convenient locations, and a very few rich cities have snow melting machines, but most cities don't. Its obvious when you think about it, but if all you're used to is rain its not trivially obvious: The grand snow strategy of most municipalities is "hope it gets warm soon".

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pants2 5 hours ago | parent [-]

This is an interesting way to frame it, but then the obvious question is, for areas where it almost never gets above freezing, why doesn't the snow get infinitely thick?

The other main ways you lose snow are: sublimation, wind blowing it elsewhere, compaction, and getting dirty (darker color helps it melt in the sun). All of these are relevant for other cities in the snow.

	▲	dathinab 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> but then the obvious question is, for areas where it almost never gets above freezing, why doesn't the snow get infinitely thick? this is how glaciers are created snow getting stuck up, not melting, compressing by weight into much much smaller ice and then more stacking up. And during the last ice age this repeating for a very long time (because snow is mostly air, so the amount of ice you get from it is very little). The reasons why this isn't too big of an issue on the north/south pool, Antarctica etc. is because this places are also very dry/don't have a lot of snow fall. To have snowfall you need water in the air. Which mostly comes from heat evaporating water. This doesn't happen in non stop freezing cold places. So the wind needs to carry the wet air over. But there is a gradient between hot wet air places and very cold places. So a lot of water rains or snows off before reaching the places where snow doesn't melt. A large part of the south pool is technically a desert as it has hardly any _new_ snow fall. Just a lot of years old snow getting moved around by wind.
	▲	nancyminusone 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		It does, see: Antarctica
	▲	sophacles 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Compaction doesn't lose snow. It loses air. This causes the pile of snow to shorten.