Winter Again by Defne

Yes, it’s winter. And yes, you probably knew that. Then why am I writing this article? To tell you more about winter, more things you probably didn’t know about. And why is the article called Winter Again instead of 5 Cool Facts about Winter? I don’t really know, I guess I just couldn’t decide which title I liked better. To satisfy you, I’ll do both.

5 Cool Facts About Winter by Defne

Happy now? Good. Let’s get on with the facts, then!

1. Snowflakes come in all shapes and sizes. It’s true, and probably not that surprising. Everyone knows no two snowflakes are alike, which means they can’t be the same, shape or size. But it probably will surprise you to know that witnesses in Fort Keogh, Montana in 1887 claimed to see snowflakes that were 15 inches wide! Now, that’s a cool fact.

2. Every winter, more than a septillion snowflakes fall. That’s a lot, right??? To put it in other words, that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or a trillion trillion.

3. The world’s tallest snowman was over 122 feet tall. In Lake Bluff, building a snowman is a classic activity almost everyone does at some point or another. But the residents in Bethel, Maine, took our tradition to the extreme when they made a 122 foot snowman with eyelashes that were made from eight pairs of skis, an eight-foot-long nose made from chicken wire and painted cheesecloth, lips made from five red car tires, and arms made from two 30-foot-tall spruce tree, three giant truck tires as buttons, a 130-foot scarf, a 48-foot-wide fleece hat, and a snowflake pendant that was six and a half feet wide. Maybe we’ll be the next to beat that record!

4. The world’s largest snowball fight had 9681 people in it. Yep, you heard that right! 9681 people, all dodging, throwing, and getting hit by snowballs. The event, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, was a celebration for the Canadian professional snowball fighter’s success that year.

5. In Rome, hours in winter were 45 minutes and in summer 75 minutes. You’ve all probably heard of days being shorter in winter, but the Romans took that to the next level by shortening the hours as well! This really probably made keeping track of things a bit trickier for them…

That’s all! I hope you learned something interesting about winter in this article, 5 Cool Facts About Winter/Winter Again. See you next year!