{"id":66270,"date":"2020-02-04T09:49:41","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T16:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/yes-it-really-is-quieter-when-it-snows-heres-why\/"},"modified":"2020-02-04T16:49:41","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T16:49:41","slug":"yes-it-really-is-quieter-when-it-snows-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/yes-it-really-is-quieter-when-it-snows-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, it really is quieter when it snows. Here\u2019s why"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=c6dab878-89e3-4527-8a84-5075565f4f33&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1067\" alt=\"The San Juan Mountains seen from U.S. Highway 160 between Cortez and Durango.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">The San Juan Mountains seen from U.S. Highway 160 between Cortez and Durango.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The silence after a snowstorm isn\u2019t just your imagination \u2013 those tiny flakes trap the sounds of your surroundings.<\/p>\n<p>Chris Bianchi, a meteorologist at Weather Nation, described the phenomenon as a sort of citywide cup of tea: After a big storm, we can take a few minutes to relax and take in the quiet.<\/p>\n<p>The science behind that quiet comes down to how sound waves travel (or, more accurately, don\u2019t travel) through snowflakes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSnowflakes, when they\u2019re spaced farther apart, there\u2019s little gaps, obviously invisible to the naked human eye,\u201d Bianchi said. \u201cBut there are these little gaps within the snow and those are very efficient at absorbing sound.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The sound waves from cars, buildings and people get trapped in those small places between the snowflakes.<\/p>\n<p>Not just any snow can trap noise. It has to be the freshly fallen, light and fluffy. Wet and heavy snow doesn\u2019t leave spaces for sound to be trapped.<\/p>\n<p>One study found a couple of inches of snow can absorb as much as 60% of sound. Snow can act as a commercial sound-absorbing foam when it\u2019s in that fluffy, freshly fallen state.<\/p>\n<p>As the snow starts to melt, those little sound-catching spaces start to go away too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(When snow melts) it compacts, and that compaction reduces the amount of little crevices and nooks and crannies that sound is able to be trapped in,\u201d Bianchi said.<\/p>\n<p>So, for at least a few hours or even a day after a snowstorm, we can get some reprieve from all that noise around us.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s calming, it\u2019s relaxing, it\u2019s tranquil,\u201d Bianchi said. \u201cLife is kind of forced in a sense to slow down.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Snowflakes trap soundwaves<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,414],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-66270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-weather"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66270"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=66270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}