How does snow thaw?

Answer 1

Packs of small bits of ice are attached to make snow. That's why it takes so long. To melt it, just pour hot water. Hope that helps. A2: when snow (or ice) turns to water, this is a change of phase, and there are usually energy changes involved with such changes. This is called the latent heat, latent meaning hidden. Thus when water freezes it gives out latent heat, and when it melts it absorbs heat from the atmosphere. This tends to make the changes slower than otherwise. If there was no latent heat involved, the change would happen very quickly, thus the ice on a pond would melt immediately the temperature reached + degC, instead of taking several days as it does in practice. Similar latent heat effects occur with changing water to steam. As you must know, a boiling kettle takes a long time to run dry, this is because the heating element has to supply latent heat, even though the water has already reached 100 degC, to evaporate all the water in the kettle.

Answer 2

The rooves present a uniform surface for the snow to fall on so the snow fall is flat.

This gives rise to several reasons why the snow takes a long time to melt.

1) Any warm wind flowing over a roof has a boundry layer of cool air which is preserved because the roof has a very large Reynolds number compared to the wind velocity of the wind. This allows a large cold boundry layer to be maintained (cooled by the snow) (several cms of insulating boundry layer). This acts like a blanket protecting the snow.

2) Any light which might warm the snow by radiation is easily reflected by the flat, white surface. (white generally means that all the light is reflected) Water is a good reradiator of infared light aswell which is generally refered to as "heat radiation".

3) Rooves are generally well insulated from the inside to keep heat in and prevent your central heating leaking energy to the outside world. This also helps to insulate the snow from the heat in your house.

Hope that answers your question.

Answer 3

Snow thaws when the air temperature rises above freezing, causing the snow to melt into water. The heat energy from the sun, warm air, or contact with a warmer surface helps to accelerate the thawing process. The melted snow then turns into liquid water, which can either be absorbed into the ground, flow into bodies of water, or evaporate into the air.

Answer 4

if you mean thaw out then its by the sun