What makes snow sticky?

El.

El.

Member
I have been told that skis slide not on the snow but on a thin layer of liquid water that the bases slide on. So why is it that when it rains on snow it gets sticky and slow?
 
Some snow, regardless of how much we get, just won’t pack and stick together. There is a simple reason for this… the snow literally isn’t “sticky”. That non-packing snow forms when we see a snowfall during very cold temps that are well below freezing. We are talking about temperatures in the low to mid teens. There is less moisture in the atmosphere at these temperatures so the snow flakes tend to be small and almost “dry”. On the other hand, wet packing snow is seen when it snow with a temperature closer to freezing (32°). At these temperatures, the snow flakes have more moisture in the atmoshpere to latch on to. The extra moisture acts like a sort of “glue” that bind the flakes together when they are packed.

fromhttp://www.addins.wrex.com/blogs/weather/2012/12/what-makes-packing-snow
 
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sticky snow is caused by a change in humidity in the snow. As moisture rises in snow (in higher temperatures) the crystals break down and the moisture in between the snow will hover below freezing. This gives the humidity in the snow to migrate and condense on a particle of snow or ice, and then freeze to bond one particle to another. On a wide scale, this can be seen as the sticky effect.

In fact, for snow to fall, this process is essential to flake formation. As the water droplets from the clouds freezes, it captures another droplet and freezes. The high humidity in the clouds lets the moisture migrate until it finds a particle The process goes on until the flake is too heavy and precipitate for the cloud.
 
Actually, it has not been proven that skis melt the snow. This may be true for ice skates, but for a surface area as large as the bases of a pair of skis, it would take too much energy to melt even a microscopic layer of snow without noticing it slowing you down. When fresh snow warms up, you get snow sticking together by the effect discussed by freestyler540 above, combined with a suction effect onto the bottom of your skis. When the snow gets to corn conditions, this doesn't happen anymore because there is enough water between frozen pieces, so the pieces don't stick together, and the pieces are large enough, to not form a uniformly flat surface to suction onto your skis.
 
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