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1 Poetry rec

Snowflake and rain fall speed

Poetry for emergencies

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Winter Trivia : It takes approximately two hours for a snowflake to fall from a cloud to the ground.

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Epigraph to Winter Trivia by Billy Collins

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Circumstances matter. A 45 min drop means the cloud is 10,000 feet above the earth’s surface with a fall speed of 1 to 6 feet per second.*

Why, then, does Collins’ snowflake take nearly three times longer? The poet writes eight stanzas about what happens in the time it takes the snowflake to fall: “we” managed to “bang the snow off our boots” and “stoke the stove back to life” and “open a bottle of wine” and

and

and

and

just as that singular snowflake

landed without a sound

in the general darkness of Vermont.

And so the book begins, a Christmas gift, which I saw on Elm Street in town. It seems that Collins needs two hours for all the warm coziness to take place. Towards the end of the book, Your Poem, begins with these lines: “The choice of season is up to you, / though winter is best for poetry.”

I hadn’t given much thought to winter and poetry. If anything, through the years, I thought of spring as the natural season for verse, when everything bursts to life. Now I have to agree, that winter may be best to curl up with a book of poetry. Published in 2024, Water, Water includes 60 new poems. The stuff of life, water. And when I looked up the fall speed of rain drops, it turns out to be much faster than the fall speed of snow flakes, on average 9 to 13 times faster.

Outside this afternoon in the cul-de-sac, divine forces interrupted our would-be badminton game. Splatter of drops on the black asphalt. The shuttlecock arcing out and into the wind as my nephews detached the net and poles from the wheeled, US General red tool carts, rolling them up the driveway and into the garage. The downpour erased the chalk lines and like that, Game Over.

The rain drops take on average 1.6 minutes to hit the ground, smaller drops as long as 7 minutes. Alas, rain has nothing on the wafting, white flakes’ sultry and slow descent.

I am inside, four or five swift strokes at the birdie a memory. And, darkness is at the window and the year is at its end.

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FOOTNOTES

*Water, Water by Billy Collins. (Random House, 2024)

*A snowflake typically takes about 45 minutes to an hour to reach the ground from a cloud layer approximately ten thousand feet above the Earth’s surface136. The fall speed of snowflakes is relatively slow, averaging around 1 to 6 feet per second, which translates to approximately 1.5 mph123.

*Prompt to Perplexity.ai

Raindrops and snowflakes fall at significantly different speeds, with raindrops generally falling much faster than snowflakes.

Raindrop Fall Speed and Time

• Average raindrops fall at about 14 mph (6.3 m/s)24
• Large raindrops (0.2 inches in diameter) can reach speeds of up to 20 mph (8.9 m/s)25
• Smaller raindrops fall more slowly, less than 3.3 feet per second (1 m/s)3
• From a cloud base of 2,000 feet:
  • Largest raindrops take about 1.1 minutes to reach the ground
  • Average raindrops take about 1.6 minutes
  • Smaller drops can take up to 7 minutes2

Snowflake Fall Speed and Time

• Snowflakes fall much more slowly, typically at 1 to 6 feet per second (0.3 to 1.8 m/s)
• This translates to approximately 1.5 mph (2.4 km/h)
• From a cloud layer at 10,000 feet, snowflakes typically take 45 minutes to an hour to reach the ground

Comparison

• Raindrops fall about 9-13 times faster than snowflakes on average
• Raindrops reach the ground much quicker, taking minutes compared to the 45-60 minutes for snowflakes
• The difference in fall speed is due to:
  1. Shape: Raindrops are more compact, while snowflakes have a larger surface area relative to their mass
  2. Density: Water is denser than snow crystals
  3. Air resistance: Snowflakes experience more air resistance due to their shape and lower mass

This significant difference in fall speed and time explains why snow can create a more serene, gentle appearance as it falls, compared to the often more intense and rapid nature of rainfall.