Sadly, we’re in a snow drought here in southwest Colorado, so the meager volume of flakes has tended toward dustings rather than major-league dumps. That got me thinking about the definition of flurries, plus some other categories of snowfall.
A “snow flurry,” according to the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology, is a “common term for a light snow shower, lasting for only a short period of time.” A “snow shower,” in turn, is “a brief period of snowfall in which intensity can be variable and may change rapidly.”
I posed the following query to ChatGPT: “complete this analogy: flurry is to snow as X is to rain” (all that studying for the SAT in the late 1980s still hasn’t worn off!)
At first, the chatbot returned “drizzle,” but that doesn’t sound right to me because such precipitation is defined by small droplet size—and enough drizzle adds up to measurable rain. ChatGPT’s runner-ups included “sprinkle,” which I kinda like. Two other chatbots—Gemini and Claude—preferred “shower,” which doesn’t seem specific enough.
The etymology and evolution of “flurry” is interesting. Merriam-Webster says its first known use was in 1686, and the word probably came from “flurr,” which means “to throw scatteringly.” The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first usage to 1698, when the word signified “a sudden agitation of the air, a gust or squall.” The origin of “flurry” may be onomatopoeic, meaning its sound resembles its meaning. In the 19th century, the term started to be used to describe precipitation and “a sudden rush (of birds),” according to the OED.
We now use “flurry” to describe “a brief period of commotion or excitement” or “a sudden occurrence of many things at once,” according to Merriam-Webster. Many news outlets have used the term to describe Donald Trump’s blizzard of executive actions. In the financial context, the word also means a burst of buying or selling with a rapid change in prices.
Flurries are just one type of snowfall. I found this set of definitions of winter precipitation types at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory:
Snow Flurries. Light snow falling for short durations. No accumulation or light dusting is all that is expected.
Snow Showers. Snow falling at varying intensities for brief periods of time. Some accumulation is possible.
Snow Squalls. Brief, intense snow showers accompanied by strong, gusty winds. Accumulation may be significant. Snow squalls are best known in the Great Lakes Region.
Blowing Snow. Wind-driven snow that reduces visibility and causes significant drifting. Blowing snow may be snow that is falling and/or loose snow on the ground picked up by the wind.
Blizzards. Winds over 35mph with snow and blowing snow, reducing visibility to 1/4 mile or less for at least 3 hours.
I can tell you from personal experience that snow squalls also happen in Colorado. The most terrifying drive in my life featured me passing through a squall while I was crossing Vail Pass on I-70 in the dark on December 22, 2020.
I’ve never seen it snow that hard: squall is flurry’s antonym. I even received a National Weather Service emergency alert on my phone:
I could barely see the end of the hood on my 4Runner. It didn’t matter that I was in four-wheel drive and had newish snow tires: my traction was lousy, so I was skidding all over the highway.
The handful of other fools on the road also had their hazard blinkers on. Some vehicles just stopped in the middle of the interstate, which seemed like an invitation to being rear-ended, yet the narrow shoulder was buried in snow that could either entrap me or send me spinning off the road, so I white-knuckled it and proceeded down the pass at a glacial pace.
Conveniently, a state trooper came along with his roof lights illuminated, allowing a few of us to follow behind his shining beacon. After about 10 minutes, the squall had moved on, but my heart rate stayed elevated long after.
Moral of the story: don’t mess with snow squalls, and savor the beauty of snow flurries.
