Seen a fair amount of snow this winter? We certainly have here in Norway. Yes, more than usual. This winter has been the coldest for the past 20 years, and many places, including Østfold, have seen record amounts of snow (well over 100cm in several places) for the past two decades. Here are a few snow facts for you:

- Snow flakes are ice crystals joined together. Each snowflake is made up of between 2 and 200 separate crystals. As snow falls, snowflakes connect to make bigger snowflakes. Snow flakes are always hexagonal (6 sides), but they are rarely perfectly symmetrical. No two snowflakes ever have the same shape. The average snowflake has a top speed of 1.7m per second.

- It can get too cold for it to snow! Because snow is basically frozen water, if there is not enough moisture in the air, it won’t snow. This is usually the case when temperatures drop below -30C.

- Many people think of snow as being white, but it is actually transparent. Snow appears white because almost all of the visible light striking its surface is reflected back, without any preference for a single colour within the colour spectrum. Depending on where you find the snow, it can actually appear red, blue, green, pink, yellow, grey or even black.

- Layers of snow accumulated on the ground act like a layer of insulation. In winter, snow keeps plants insulated from sub-zero freezing temperatures.

- The fear of snow is called chionophobia.

- Oslo this year also experienced its worst snowfall since 1987. A record 180 municipal employees have been working round the clock to clear the city streets clogged with snow and snowed-down cars. There was so much of it that dumping grounds were quickly overfilled, and snow had to be dumped into the harbour.

- Not surprisingly maybe, the English words ’ski’ and ’slalom’ both come from Norwegian, where they mean… well yes, ski and slalom (slalåm)