Finnish words for snow

Frozen precipitation that is still falling

1. lumi: snow
2. pyry: snow shower
3. myräkkä: snowstorm
4. rae: hail
5. räntä: sleet
6. tuisku: snow shower with strong wind
7. laviini: a small avalanche

8. hyhmä: snow floating atop water
9. loska: very wet snow; snow, water and mud mixed together
10. sohjo: slush; snow and water mixed together

11. ahto: pack-ice (broken & refrozen ice)
12. ahtauma: a formation of pack-ice
13. jää: ice
14. kide: ice crystal
15. kohva: gray ice formed from wet snow
16. paanne: multi-layered ice (typically waves crash on top and freeze)
17. railo: pressure ridge in ice
18. röpelö: uneven ice
19. tökkö: ice with frost on top

20. iljanne: a thin layer of snow atop ice
21. hanki: a even layer of snow on the ground, esp. if enough for skiing
22. huurre: rime; granular frost (the white stuff in your freezer)
23. härmä: frost
24. kinos: snow drift; a loose pile of snow, esp. one formed by wind
25. kaljama: a thick layer of ice on the ground, lethal in the spring
26. kuura: hoarfrost; frozen dew
27. nietos: a large, hard pile of snow (may be refrozen)
28. nuoska: "snowballable" snow, usually formed when powdery snow melts a bit
29. polanne: a hard layer of compacted snow
30. tykky: large chunks of snow, esp. when frozen onto trees
31. viti: freshly fallen powdery snow

33. avanto: a hole in ice
34. jotos: reindeer tracks in snow
35. latu: a ski trail in snow
36. rannio: a reindeer path in deep snow

38. nirskua
39. narskua
40. kirskua
41. nitistä
42. narista

Some of the above are pretty obscure, but these are downright bizarre. Finns who do not speak the dialect in question (marked in parentheses if known) will not understand these. And note that this is only a small sampling, linguists have recorded literally hundreds of these.

43. hölse: slush
44. höty: loose snow
45. höttyrä: loose snow
46. höyty: loose snow
47. judake: reindeer track in snow (Lapland)
48. klossakko: slush
49. komo: raised ice
50. kieppi: snow pile
51. mora: uncompacted, unskiable snow (Lapland)
52. triimu: snow pile (West)
53. triivu: snow pile (West)
54. purku: snow shower (East)
55. pöykky: snow pile (Tampere)

Depending on context, these may or may not refer to snow.

56. keli: weather conditions; the "skiability" of snow
57. pulveri: powder; very cold, fine, powdery snow
58. valli: wall, blockage; a wall of snow (natural or manmade)

Despite all this, Finnish lacks the verb "to snow"! That's right, to say "it is snowing", Finns have to state sataa lunta ("it is raining snow") or more colloquially tulee lunta ("snow is coming"). To fix this, I have used the noun lumi (snow) to derive the verb lumista (to snow), as in ulkona lumisee, "it is snowing outside". Alas, my efforts to propagate this meme have so far been largely unsuccessful...

Conclusion

So what does all this add up to? Not much, necessarily. It is fairly obvious that a language spoken in a northern climate like Finland will develop lots of shorthand to explain common weather conditions.¹ This does not prove the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, since the concepts themselves are still explainable in English; you can still probably imagine what large chunks of snow frozen onto tree branches look like without knowing the word tykky. And, on a personal note, as a typical Finnish city dweller who spends most of this time safely indoors in places with central heating, I find much of the vocabulary above just as bizarre and useless as my gentle reader probably does.

1: Incidentally, the Sami language spoken in Lapland has even more excruciatingly detailed words for snow. Some of the weather-related terminology used by Sami reindeer herders can be found here: http://tuikku.urova.fi/avoin/poronhoito/terminologia.htm

References

Sources used for this list include, but are not limited to, the following:

http://muhu.www.ee/mailing_lists/humor/msg73.html
http://www.durth-roos.de/sb/wint_e_fi.pdf
http://www.llk.se/

And cheers to vuo for comments and additions.