why does the temperature rise when it starts snowing?
It’s been a while since I did any meteorology/climatology, but there are two basic explanations. • Latent Heat Transfer increases the air temperature My explanation on this is a bit rusty, so I’m going to refer you to this page on Energy Balance, courtesy the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. But essentially, during the evaporation process – liquid to gas – energy is stored in the water molecules. When those water molecules condense – forming snow – that energy is released into the surrounding atmosphere, causing the air to warm up. So that’s one reason, although in real, tangible terms this warming would be fairly minimal and may not be perceptible to us. • Snow, and the associated cloud cover act as an insulating blanket Cloud cover raises the temperature because heat that would otherwise be radiated off the surface of the other back out to space gets t
