Is this conversion even right? I found it on google with little explanation. One inch of rain seems minuscule to 10 inches of snow but maybe I have a fundamental misunderstanding of how much one inch of rain actually is. Please help.
In: Chemistry
Snow isn’t very dense, meaning there’s a lot of air between the water molecules. Liquid water is a lot more dense so the molecules are much closer together.
If there is snow on the ground where you are, try an experiment. Fill a stove pot full of snow – don’t press pack it in, but make sure it’s filled well. Then put it on the stove to cook. When all the snow is melted, but before it starts to boil, take it off, let the pot cool, and then measure the depth of the water. It should be around 1/10th the depth of the pot.
If you packed the snow down as you were filling the pot, the water will be higher, because you put more snow in the pot by making the snow more dense.
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