Where Does the Most Snow Fall?

When it gets cold out­side, there’s some­thing almost every­one looks for­ward to: a snowy day! There is some­thing spe­cial about watch­ing a bliz­zard from the win­dow of a warm apart­ment, or going out­side and hav­ing a snow­ball fight. If you are a big fan of win­ter, then you should con­sid­er mov­ing some­where in the coun­try where the most snow falls every year. But where is such a pro­tect­ed area? It turns out that there are many such places all over the world.

In this arti­cle, we will cov­er two ques­tions:

• Where is the most snow?
• How much pre­cip­i­ta­tion does the South Pole receive?

While some peo­ple love trop­i­cal beach­es and palm trees, hard­ly any­one would mind a few snowy days a year. Those who love the Christ­mas and New Year hol­i­days will be in sev­enth heav­en if it snows on the eve of the hol­i­days!

Rus­sia did not get into the top of the snowiest places in the world. Kam­chat­ka is con­sid­ered the most snowy region of the coun­try, where the aver­age snow depth exceeds 2 meters, but peri­od­i­cal­ly there are record snow­falls with a cov­er height of 3 meters.

If you want to live in the Unit­ed States, head to Mount Wash­ing­ton, New Hamp­shire. It holds the record for the most days of record­ed snow­fall in a year — 118 days! On aver­age, Mount Wash­ing­ton is famous for its aver­age annu­al rain­fall of 2,460 mm. If you pre­fer a dif­fer­ent coast, move to Par­adise Ranger Sta­tion on Mount Rainier (Wash­ing­ton). This moun­tain pass in the Pacif­ic North­west received 460mm of rain in 36 hours in 2006.

If noth­ing but the snowiest place on Earth sat­is­fies you, then you need to move to Japan. In par­tic­u­lar, it is worth look­ing at the north­ern Japan­ese Alps of the island of Hon­shu. Cold Siber­ian winds throw huge amounts of snow into these moun­tains. How many? In 1927, the snow depth on Mount Ibu­ki was 11.8 meters.

The snow in these moun­tains has become a pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tion. The high­way through the moun­tains is reg­u­lar­ly cleared and remains open all win­ter. The place is known as Yuki-no-Otani Snow Canyon. Tourists stop along the road to take pic­tures of their vehi­cles sur­round­ed by snow walls up to 20 meters high!

Some peo­ple are sur­prised that Antarc­ti­ca is not on this list. The rea­son is that the South Pole is one of the dri­est places on Earth. Due to the lack of mois­ture in the atmos­phere, the South Pole receives only 50 mil­lime­ters of rain per year!