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Snow Words
Wed Jan 29, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. Each winter, many media features claim Inuit
and Eskimo languages have hundreds of words for snow while English has just a few. But hang
around the ski slopes, and you will see this is totally lame.
Talk to two-plankers, even those on skinny skis, or knuckledragging snowboarders, and hear
what terms have entered the snowcabulary.
While the Inuit recognize pukak, as crumbly, ice crystal snow, plankers call it sugar powder
derived from powder, a light, dry, fluffy snow.
Then we have champagne powder, very dry snow, so light it can't be made into a snowball.
Mashed potato is mushy, wet snow, so heavy a shovel stands up in it. Boilerplate or
bulletproof describes hard, dense, icy snow, often created by a thaw or rain, and not to be
confused with corn, spring snow that forms into small, light pellets, or frozen chicken heads
which form when spring slush freezes.
Newly fallen snow can be the freshies, Sierra cement, granular, or hardpack, but the best
fresh new stuff leaves The Goods or a White Room on the slopes and not white asphalt,
breakable crust, or New England powder, also known as ice. And heaven forbid groomed slopes
have crud, chowder, or Death Cookies on them.
American skiers have been credited with more than 70 new snow words, and the list continues to
grow as new slang emerges into popular usage. So be bodacious, and help add to the list. That
would be phat!
Hats off to the Weather Doctor, Keith Heidorn of Victoria, British Columbia for all that
research. The Weather Notebook is supported by Subaru, and The National Science Foundation.
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