THE COLOUR OF SNOW

Light from the atmosphere will collide with a snowflake, bouncing and refracting off the many tiny crystalline parts. In a single snowflake, turned just-so, we may see a rainbow.

But when snowflakes gather on a hillside, all those angles suffice to refract each wave-length equally, until the hill seems to be covered in a white blanket.

TONALITIES

During the day, the snow on the hill will change in tone, in colour, in quality. On cloudy, snowstorm days it is a hazy green-grey; while on a washed blue sky day, the snow seems to be cleaner, brighter, effervescent.

Then there is that special time: dusk. At dusk, the snow takes on the purples of the clouds, the deep, shifting layers of pink and maroon.

white is the absence of colour
as all waves in the spectrum are reflected and scattered
off a white surface,
white is the colour of light itself;
and yet
white contains all colours
just as light contains a rainbow