Windy week makes for grainy, tough-to-shovel snow in Manitoba

If you've had trouble shovelling lately, it could be because the white stuff that fell on Monday and Tuesday is actually denser than other snowfalls we've seen recently.

If you looked at them up close, the flakes that fell earlier this week probably didn't look like conventional snowflakeswith those antler-like branches sticking out in every direction, saysEnvironment Canadameteorologist TerriLang.

Instead, she says after being tossed around in the dry-cold Manitoba air, the flakes would have probably looked more like smallflat plates which would be packed by strong winds into dense, hard-to-move piles of snow.

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"The edges [of the flakes] all get sheared off,"Langsaid. "Everyone thinks of the typical snowflake, but some of them aren't like that. Some of them are columns, some of them are hexagonal [and some are] plates that fall down."

Aboutfive to 10 centimetres of snow fell in Winnipeg earlier this week, while areas east of the Red River Valley saw up to 15 centimetres. Extreme cold settled in on much of southern Manitoba following the storm, especially in western Manitoba.

When the little snowflakes are blown around in the airand into snowbanks they can change shape again and formsmall pellets, said Lang.Imagine a pile of really tiny frozen grains of rice.

That pellet-like snow can form extremely dense snowbanks, said Lang.

"Here on the Prairies, with the winds that we have, these snowflakes can be blown long distances and packed really, really hard,"she said.

With low moisture and little air between the flakes, the snow pellets are compacted together.

"Certainly when you're trying to shovel denser snow it's heavier, much heavier, and it's harder to break," Lang said.

"It makes it harder to shovelbecause you're trying to break it apart," she said. "All the little snowflakes are much tighter."

The snow is actually denser than fluffy snow that falls at slightly warmer temperatures, like around10 C to 15 C, and can make for back-breaking shovelling.

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Lang added while the snow on the ground right now may be notably denser than snow a few weeks ago, it's still not as heavy asthe wet snow that falls just below freezing.

That type of sticky snow can be dangerous for people with heart conditions to shovel, she said, and normally only falls in Manitoba during the spring and fall.