Feb. 15, 2026, 6:02 a.m. ET
Call it beautiful, annoying, inspiring or dangerous, snow is anything but boring. And that’s even before you start learning more about the science behind it.
Olympians and everyday Americans know snow is a complex and fickle phenomenon, influenced by temperature and moisture, but it’s so much more than that.
“It’s just frozen water, but it can be so many different things,” Gus Schumacher, a cross-country skier competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics, told USA TODAY.
Snow, of course, is essential to the winter games. It flies into the air as skiers race downhill and adds to the scenic mountain backdrops in the Italian Alps. When Austrian skier Benjamin Karl won a gold medal in the men’s parallel giant slalom on opening weekend of the 2026 games, he celebrated by ripping off his jackets and shirt and collapsing facedown into the snow in homage to one of his idols.
Besides being crucial for winter sports events, snow plays many other important roles, said David Robinson, New Jersey State Climatologist and a distinguished professor in the Rutgers University geography department.
It’s a vital source of drinking water and hydropower and provides water to irrigate crops, Robinson said.
In California, they hope for snowfall each winter to help ensure an adequate water supply for months to come, he said. Snow can protect plants and soils from deep freezes and affect wildlife migration, hibernation and survival. It’s also a driving influence on winter weather. So it comes as no surprise that scientists study snow, snowfall and snowpack and are working to improve forecasts. Even the snow sports attract scientists and snow experts.
Snow facts
There’s lots to know about snow, including these facts from Robinson and the National Snow and Ice Data Center:
- Snow falls as ice crystals when there’s adequate humidity and freezing temperatures
- It’s translucent, not white. It’s the light reflecting off snow that makes it look white
- Snow dampens sounds when snow cover is fresh because it absorbs sound waves. Once it melts and refreezes, it can reflect sound waves
- It can refrigerate the lower atmosphere and lead to more snow
- It reflects four to six times more of the sun’s energy than bare ground absorbs
- It covers such a massive area in the northern hemisphere that it controls heat and cooling patterns over land more than any other single feature
Snowpack can also provide a ground-level layer of insulation for small mammals and animals. It’s called the subnivean layer and it creates an igloo-like effect that animals can build burrows, Robinson said. The snow keeps the temperature there at freezing, and provides a hidden little world for the animals, even when the pack temperatures above are at zero.
Snowpack can also insulate winter wheat, insulate soil so it doesn’t freeze as deeply and moisten soils to help prompt germination as the snow melts in the spring, he said.
The effects aren’t always positive. When snow melts too fast it becomes a flood threat. Or when action is happening in the layers of snow below the surface, it can create dangerous avalanches.
When snow gets too deep or develops an icy crust, it can be harder for big mammals to move through it. In Robinson’s New Jersey community, deer that are commonly seen in back yards have been meandering on the street since the community has been under roughly 10 inches of snow for at least 17 days.
Ski science
For competition skiing, the science of snow is “really complicated,” said Schumacher. It’s the job of skiers and their teams to know what conditions are and how to make the most of them, or avoid pitfalls.
Temperature, water content and the crystal shapes of snowflakes dictate a lot about which skis and wax are used during competition events, Schumacher said. “There may be a million combinations of skis and wax and structure.”
Schumacher’s role when skiing a course is to know how soft or firm the snow is because that dictates “where his power application has to change.” When it’s really warm, and snow begins melting to slush, “you have to ski differently,” he said. Slushy conditions have been blamed for performance issues in the opening days of the winter games.
How do you describe snow?
Indigenous Tribes, meteorologists and even Olympians have a host of words for describing snow. As it falls, snow might change form to sleet, rain or ice, depending on conditions, then back to snow again.
After snow falls, skiers might call it powder, slush, ice or sugar, Schumacher said. “Champagne powder” describes superlight and fluffy snow while “Sierra Cement” describes the more wet snow traditional in California’s High Sierra. Sometimes he uses “corn” to describe the surface of the snow when its melting and refreezing, while “maritime snowpack” describes the really wet snow that clings to steep surfaces and attracts skiers to remote slopes in Alaska.
Snow appreciation
Schumacher, who claimed his second World Cup victory by winning a 5 kilometer freestyle event in December, said he regularly takes time to just admire the snow. The winter ski season started in Finland, and the snow and frosty trees against the pastel colors in the sky from the low angle of the sun were “pretty hard to beat beauty-wise,” he said.
Even at night, the darkness is nicer because of the light reflecting from the snow, he said. “If you’re in a city, it’s the ambient light on the snow, and if you’re not, it’s the moonlight and starlight on the snow, which I think is just amazing.”
“I love it,” he said. “I love the winter.”
Schumacher competed in three events during the opening week. He finished 24th in the Skiathlon, just missed qualifying for the quarter finals in the Cross-Country Skiing Men’s Sprint Classic and competed in the men’s 10 km race on Feb. 13, finishing 39th.
His love of snow is behind his support of the Protect Our Winters organization, a group that includes Olympians and former Olympians concerned about climate warming and its impacts on snow, particularly in the American West.
Around the world, Schumacher and other sports enthusiasts see rain lines higher on mountains than before, trees growing at higher elevations and glaciers that are shrinking.
“It’s scary,” he said. “A lot of our races are more iffy, and if they happen, they often happen with snow farming and snowmaking.”
Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, writes about violent weather, climate change and other news. Reach her at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.