SNOW FACTS Amaze Your Friends & Astound Total Strangers!! In the western United States, mountain snow pack can contribute up to 75 % of all year-round surface water supplies. (That's right, Amarillo, our snow is your drinking water.) The average snowfall amount per day during snow season is about two inches. In some of the mountain areas of the American West, the average is seven inches per snow day. Practically every location in the good ole US of A has seen it snow. Even most portions of southern Florida have seen a few flurries, and there has been a genuine snowman in front of the Alamo. Fresh snow makes an excellent insulator. Ten inches of new snow with a density of 0.07 inches & 7% water, is roughly equal to a 6 inch layer of fiberglass insulation with an R-18 value. (So leave the snow on the roof.) The continental United States experiences an average of 105 snow-producing storms a year. Typically a storm will have a lifetime of 2-5 days and deliver snow to portions of several states. Man-made snow is real snow. It just isn't made by a storm of nature. IT'S A FLAKY DEAL In his treatise entitled On The Six-Cornered Snowflake, published in 1611, German astronomer and natural philosopher Johannes Kepler pondered the question of why snow crystals always exhibited a six-fold symmetry. His work was the first scientific reference to snow crystals. Since that time, snow and precipitation have been studied extensively and an accurate system of recording and reporting on snow has become part of our everyday life. (Witness the institution of the TV Weatherman in our culture.) According to the Western Regional Climate Center, Red River receives an annual average of 146.3 inches of snow. (It doesn't snow much during June, July, August or September.) While that figure reflects the town as documented by long-time weather reporter Bob Prunty, the surrounding mountains receive considerably more than that, but there are no official reporting sites on Gold Hill, Greenie, Van Deist or Wheeler Peak. Those areas get three to four times that amount. A three foot snowfall is not uncommon in the high, high country that surrounds the Red River Valley. In fact, a mere fifty foot of change in altitude up the side of a mountain can reflect a significant increase in snowfall and snow depth. The snowpack is always deeper on the Red River Ski Area and at the Enchanted Forest Cross Country Ski and Snowshoe Area on Bobcat Pass. And if you really want to experience the deep, deep stuff, take a snowmobile ride to the nearby meadows of the Midnight country. Snow continues to challenge weather experts across the country. Even in this modern, techno world, it is still extremely difficult to predict and hard to measure once it has fallen. Meteorologists will tell you that the snow events in the Rocky Mountains of the American West are difficult to forecast because 1) rapid changes due to vast differences in terrain are frequent; and 2) there isn't enough weather monitoring equipment "out west" to provide data of those rapid changes. In layman's terms, snow reporting for the mountains is a crap shoot at best. One thing is clear: Red River snow is magical and great fun as well.