You probably noticed something if you braved the cold to enjoy the snow the past few days. As I can attest to from the video above, it was great for sledding, but the snow was not so great for snowball fights. The moment you tried to throw a snowball, it disintegrated. The snow was more like powder than anything else. Why is this? If snow is just water, how could it be "dry"?
The snow on Wednesday was dry, probably some of the driest snow we can get in Nebraska and Iowa. At Eppley Airfield, we received 3.2" of snow, which may sound like a decent amount of moisture. However, the actual moisture amounted to 0.16" of liquid precip, or the equivalent of a light rain shower passing overhead in the springtime. To look at it another way, if you filled up a water bottle with snow and let it melt, the amount of water you would get would fill about 1/6th of the bottle.
This is unfortunate for those looking for good moisture in a dry winter. For 2025, we have seen around 0.21" of liquid, when on average we are up to 1.15".
So why is this? Well, we learn in school that every snowflake is unique, which is (mostly) true. This is because the composition of every snow event is different. Temperature, moisture, track of the low pressure, conditions in the cloud layer of the atmosphere, and more. Any changed factor leads to a change in snow totals and snow composition. This is partly why snow forecasting can always seem so fickle, small changes in any factor leads to a big difference.
For the dry vs wet snow factor, the key is temperature. The colder it is, the less water content the air can hold, thus the less water content inside the snow. When temperatures are in the 20s/30s, the snow tends to be more wet/heavy. On Wednesday, single-digit temperatures as the snow fell meant the snow was much drier, but how dry?
In meteorology, the composition of the snow is coined in what is called snow-to-liquid ratios (SLRs). SLR is measured in how many inches of snow it would take to produce 1" of liquid. Many of our snowstorms in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa fall in the 10:1 to 12:1 range, meaning 10-12" of snow when melted down would equate to 1" of liquid.
The Wednesday snow? 20:1 ratios, meaning it would've taken 20" of snow to equal 1" of liquid.
So why is drier snow bad for snowballs? The water content within the snow acts as a glue to stick the snowflakes together, which forms the ball. Drier snow has less water, so less glue to stick the snow together. It would be like trying to make a flour ball, the flour would not stick together without some agent (be it water or eggs) to form into a ball.
At least the sledding was good if you got over the cold...
