This old expression ‘It is cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey’ sounds very rude, but it isn’t! It comes from the practice of putting iron cannon balls on a dimpled brass plate on the deck of a war-ship. Brass shrinks when frozen, and the plate would shrink enough to cause the iron balls to fall out.

Our recent ‘brass monkeys weather’ prompted me to investigate the cold here, and as a tourist, the last place you would expect to find snow is Portugal, an exceptional country better known for over 300 days of sun a year. Yet snow does fall, and there are ski resorts to prove it in the highest mountain range in Portugal, Serra da Estrela, where snow falls during Portugal's winter months, from November to March.

However, it’s not common to have snow in Lisbon, but this has occurred on rare occasions. Apparently January 2006 was the last time it snowed in the capital, and before that, the most recent records of snowfall were in 1954 and 1944, at Christmas time.

The winter of 1953/54 was so cold that snow fell in many areas of the Algarve, many likening it to ‘falls of almond blossom’, and with grey leaden skies and very little wind, snow settled in places where no-one had ever seen snow before. Accidents were plentiful as people - unused to such a phenomenon – slid and fell. Despite the glee of children experiencing the snow, the other side of the coin was the desolation of the farmers in the presence of devastated crops, and the cold snap resulted in the death of many birds and swallows that had only recently arrived.

Over the past 60 years, small snowflakes have fallen in the region, but never in equal size to the snowfall that occurred in February 1954.


Sun to snow

Both my children were born in a hot country, and were more used to sunny days on the beach in their free time, but we moved to the Isle of Man in November one year, and it snowed. Neither of them had experienced snow before, and the teacher at my son’s primary school was aware of this, and kindly let him and his new best buddy time outside to play in the virgin snow that covered the playground before the rest of the school came out and ruined the experience for him by pelting him with snowballs!!

Words for snow

If you had asked me, I would have said somewhere like Iceland or Sweden would have had the most words for ‘snow’, and indeed they do have loads – Iceland has, according to an old Icelandic proverb, more than a hundred words for snow. While this might be a slight exaggeration, in reality there are at least 46 different terms, and this probably isn’t a comprehensive number.

According to explorer Franz Boas, the Inuit of Greenland supposedly had over 40, with those living in Alaska have more than 70, and his estimates might not have been far off the mark.

But beating them all is the Scots, with well over 400 words for snow, including such gems as ‘feefle’ (swirling snow), ‘flindrikin’ (a brief snow shower) and ‘spitters’ (small flakes of wind-driven snow). it’s undoubtedly an impressive collection.


Are snowflakes all different?

It is said that it can take up to 100,000 water vapor droplets to make each snowflake, with the smallest being as small as the width of a human hair, and they say snowflakes are like fingerprints, no two are alike. Hard to believe that each is unique when there are an unfathomable number, and this may seem like another myth, but it is supposedly true. However, because of the sheer number of snowflakes that fall every winter — an estimated 1 septillion — it would be nearly impossible to prove that no two snowflakes are identical. (For those who like details, one septillion is a 1 followed by 24 zeroes). Because of how they form are influenced by atmospheric conditions, scientists have agreed it is highly unlikely identical snowflakes exist.

So, no two snowflakes are alike. Or at least they probably aren't.

Author

Marilyn writes regularly for The Portugal News, and has lived in the Algarve for some years. A dog-lover, she has lived in Ireland, UK, Bermuda and the Isle of Man. 

Marilyn Sheridan