to cold

i expect most of you have heard this saying,its ,to cold to snow........has anybody have the answer to this.ive watched many a programme on tv about artic and antartic,seems to snow there in minus sllly temperatures
 
It's an urban myth ...........if temp gets low enough it can snow ....no matter how low it goes.......it can never be too cold to snow
 
I think what they mean is that it will warm up as the snow arrives making it feel warmer with the cloud cover. But it was to cold for the deer this morning freezing fog and not a deer in site stalking fee would have been returned this morning lol .
 
I believe that in order for snow to form, you need two air masses of different temperatures to meet. The resulting convection currents are what buffets the water droplets around and create the distinctive crystalline structure. Otherwise you just end up with hail or rain. So it can't really be too cold for snow, but just a single mass of cold air without a warmer one doesn't allow for snow.
 
If you get snow when it is very cold it will only be very light small flakes, the warmer it is the larger the snow flakes are untill they turn to rain.

Apparently :-|.
 
Here on the west of Europe really cold air, and cold weather, tends to come to us from the east on an easterly wind. Quite often this air will have come from Siberia and so it will not have passed over much in the way of water to get here and as a result it will be fairly "dry" with little potential to produce snow.

Air that comes off the Atlantic however will tend to be warmer and to be carrying a lot more moisture and so it has considerable potential for snow if the conditions are cold enough.

I suspect this is where the saying has come from as really cold continental air is unlikely to give us snow. This also tends to be why snow doesn't lie for every long here as it often arrives on the leading edge of warmer air off the Atlantic. As others have said this warm, wet air meets cold air and causes snow but if the warm air keeps pushing east then the temperatures will start to rise and the newly fallen snow will melt.

Here in Northern Ireland we were on the warm side of the weather front that gave you snow in parts of England and so we've had no snow over the last while and, in fact, the conditions have been quite nice.
 
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