Anything But the "R" Word

In their email of March 2 Brundage Mountain Resort included a very clever description of different types of snow which we are republishing here:

Anything But the "R" Word

Courtesy of Merriam-Webster, here's some unique winter weather vocab for you, while we avoid the "R" word and pray for more snow.

Névé

The partially compacted granular snow that forms the surface part of the upper end of a glacier. Also occasionally called firn. Originated from a word in the Swiss dialect of French and, before that, from the Latin word for snow, nix.

Skift
A light fall of r*** or snow. 

Onding
A heavy fall of r*** or snow. Less than a blizzard but more than a normal snowfall. Used in Scotland and Northern England since the middle of the 18th century.

Graupel
Soft hail. The word has German origins and is the diminutive of the word for "pearl barley" (Graupe). Has been in use since the 1870s when meteorologists thought they needed to distinguish one kind of hail from another.

Corn Snow
Granular snow formed by alternate thawing and freezing. Also referred to as spring snow or simply corn. Came to use in the early 20th century.

Sposh
Soft or slushy snow. Thought to be a combination of the words slush and posh, posh being an archaic term that means "a slushy mass".

Firnification
The process whereby snow is changed to névé.