Snow, what is it good for?

Water is the primary thing in snow. You are probably thinking, “It is the only thing, isn’t it?” Well, no. All falling precipitation, snow, sleet, rain, start as ice formed around particles of dust. You can ‘seed’ clouds with small particles, like silver nitrate, to force a downpour from a water heavy cloud. The ice that forms gets heavy and falls. Sometimes it melts on the way down, and sometimes it gets pushed back up by strong winds, creating even larger ice crystals.
The dust in the rain or snow is still there when it hits the ground. That is why things get dusty after it has rained. That is why when you collect rain or snow for water, you need to at least let the particulates settle if not actually strain the liquid. Doing a boil or distilling isn’t bad either. You never know what the dust came from. And melt snow before drinking it as taking in frozen water will make your core temperature drop, leading to nasty things like hypothermia.

Snow is essential in the winter for plants to survive. Yes, it freezes delicate vegetable matter on contact, but it insulates the ground from a deeper freeze. It can also help you from getting a deeper freeze. Igloos and ice construction really do work! If you don't have an engineering degree, try finding a pine tree that hangs to the ground. If you have space under the branches enough to lay down in, you have shelter. If it is winter, you have a chance to build up snow around the base and on the lower branches. You can also use branches for padding underneath you. Small snow caves can also be used, if you do not let it get covered up at the entrance. Remember that snow does not ‘breathe’.

Snow can be crafty as well as a force of nature. If you make candles, and there is snow(ice works, too), you can make lace candles. Try drizzling hot wax into a snowbank, letting it melt in a bit and then putting a wick in. You can use a container(milk cartons work well) with snow or ice lightly packed in and then put the hot wax into that. It is easier to put a wick into the container version before pouring the wax than the snowbank style.

For other candle creations, go to the canned candle page.

Using snow, and the cold that creates it, in another artistic and really cool way, you can create ice shot glasses and bottle coolers. Taking straight sided or flaring cups, non glass preferable for this, put water in them and half-freeze them. You can do this in a freezer or outside. When there is still water in the middle of the ice, pop a hole in the top of the ice, let out the water and then scrape the hole as wide as you can to make it good for drinking out of. The rim of ice should be thick enough so that it will not break when you take the ice out. Warm the cup enough in hot water to loosen the ice, and put the newly formed ice glass onto a metal sheet, like a baking sheet, and put it back where it is freezing. Use for shots of alcohol's that are served cold, like Vodka. Halves of lemon and lime rinds can also be frozen and used the same way.
To make bottle coolers, use a milk container or other disposable(read cuttable) container that is no smaller than 1 inch larger than the bottle you want to freeze. Put the bottle in, put in decorative items, like flowers and glitter, and then water. Put into freezing conditions until the water has completely turned to ice. It is best to do this with full bottles of alcohol as the ice can crush empty bottles. If you do not want to use this method with alcohol, use alcohol to begin with in the bottle and replace with the liquid you want. Cranberry juice is a good choice.

Snow is water. Dusty water, but it is still water. Treat it as the finite resource it is.

Other ways to Find Water

How do you Find Food?