Linguistics question

[conuly]

Poll #34102 Snow

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 58

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After the snow has fallen, sometimes it looks like more snow is falling when the wind blows it off of trees and roofs. Do you have a word or specific phrase for this?

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Yes, and I'll tell you in the comments
7 (13.0%)

No, but I've heard some people use a term which I'll tell you in the comments
1 (1.9%)

No
41 (75.9%)

No - I don't live where it snows and am unfamiliar with this phenomenon
5 (9.3%)

Clicky?

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CLICKY
43 (100.0%)

And for reference, I generally call this "treedrift". It's a noun. I could use it as a verb form, but I don't.

Comments

[ioplokon]

Our forecast calls this blowing snow (or a snow squall if there is really a lot of it).

[conuly]

Aha, I don't believe I've heard that term, but to be fair, we don't get many blizzards nowadays, and when I see this it's not in quantities high enough to deserve a weather advisory past "Gosh, that's pretty!"

[cactuswatcher]

Yes, blowing snow.

[chomiji]

Yes, blowing snow.

[chazzbanner]

In Minnesota this is a 'ground blizzard' - more or less. It's commonly used about exposed areas (prairie) where the wind drives snow that's already fallen on the ground. It can cause white-out conditions, dangerous driving. I don't really think of it as from snow blown off trees and roofs, though.

[conuly]

If you have enough to cause white-out conditions then it's a ground blizzard everywhere, but I'm just talking about a small amount of flakes. Enough to be pretty, not nearly enough to be hazardous.

[jessie_c]

Not unless it falls down the back of my neck, and then what I call it is unprintable.

[conuly]

Sartorial advice is beyond the scope of this post, but have you considered a scarf? A hoodie? Both?

[jessie_c]

When you prepare for it, it never happens. But go out without them and just watch...

[julian]

I suppose this can count as drifting.

[conuly]

Like in Mario Kart?

[sabotabby]

I've lived with snow all my life and I've never heard a term for that!

[crystalpyramid]

Same!!

[hilarita]

Somewhere lurking in the back of my mind is the word "spindle". I don't have a source I can point to; I've not tried to search - this is my unfiltered recollection or possibly hallucination :-)

[cimorene]

Wax thought of a word in Swedish for it, not one that I've ever heard before! But we're far from the north of Finland or Sweden here.

[movingfinger]

I call it windblown snow.

[nocowardsoul]

I don't know any word for that. It rarely snows where I grew up and live but I remember observing it when I went to college elsewhere.

[steorra]

People in the comments mentioned the term "blowing snow", and I realized I'm receptively familiar with that term but it didn't occur to me when I was answering the poll so I said I didn't have a word for it. (It's a term I'd expect to hear in a weather report but not really otherwise.)

[carbonel]

On the news in Chicago (the Windy City) it was generally called "blowing and drifting snow."

[buttonsbeadslace]

I remember this phrase from Wisconsin also, and maybe also "wind-driven snow".

[foms]

I don't differentiate between snow that has already come to rest and is then blown off the ground as compared with the same but is blown off trees and roofs. I don't expect that it much happens from trees and roofs but not from the ground at the same time.

https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/weather-general-tools-resources/glossary.html
Blowing snow/Poudrerie élevée: Snow lifted from the earth's surface by the wind to a height of 2 metres or more.

It's a term in regular use in weather reports and driving conditions reports where I live.

"Spindle" might be related to spindrift, which could be used for snow, by extension from the usual water or sand.