Why the World Gets Quieter When It Snows | the Slowdown - Culture, Nature, Future

“The first fall of snow is not only an event—it is a magical event,” the late English novelist J.B. Priestley wrote in an essay for his 1928 book, Apes and Angels. “You go to bed in one kind of a world, and wake up in another quite different.”

According to David Herrin, an associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Engineering, a few inches of snow can soak up as much as 60 percent of its surrounding sounds. That’s because snowflakes, as they begin to stick to the ground, act similarly to soundproofing materials such as fibers and foams. A flake’s six-sided crystallin