Listening back to a Snowy Winter

Now that the snow in England appears to have passed for good this year, it appears to be a good time to listen back and reflect upon the influence it has had on the sound of our winter.

I always think that the snow has a funny effect on the sound of our environment. There is a sense of stillness and calm even when it is just quite a light sprinkling. Maybe this comes from being able to see something falling from the sky but not really hear it. Unlike wind, rain and hail, snow is barely audible in its decent and impact with the ground, but probably has more affect on sound than any other weather once settled.


It has been a great couple of months in England for studying this, as for a country that tends not to get very much of it, we have had an awful lot. It has often been sudden and unexpected leading to greater affect on everything else.

The first thing I notice when stepping out in the morning after it has snowed through the night, is the eerie quiet, like permanently walking around at four in the morning. There is a mute deadness all around, a kind of muffled but openly spacious sound, like living in a very small space without any walls.

But why? Well I put this down primarily to the texture of the snow, and the fact that it covers all of the reflective, reverberant surfaces that make up the city, with an absorptive coating; sucking sound in and throwing very little of it back out again. Imagine the difference between throwing a tennis ball at a concrete floor and throwing it on a sandy beach. It just doesn't bounce back in the same way.

What this tells me is that I am much more aware of the sonic make-up of the city than I think I am. I can describe what it sounds like outside my studio but I don't tend to hear how the sound reflects off of each individual surface around me to create a distinct sonic environment without considerable concentration. I guess what I mean is that I can tell you that I hear cars and how they sound but it is more difficult to explain exactly why those cars sound the way they do on my street, and minutely different on the next.

But this is exactly the point. We all subconsciously understand our environment through a combination of senses - and hearing is one of them. That is why it sounds so alien outside after a good coating of snow.

This is I suppose what you would call the direct or primary sonic affect of snow on the environment. But then, particularly in a country such as England that it always caught a little by surprise, there are a host of secondary or indirect affects too.

There is less traffic on the roads and what there is goes much slower than normal meaning quieter sounds, less ferocious engines more gentle crunching, sliding and sloshing through the snow.

The sounds of children and many adults too can be heard having fun in places usually empty in the winter as schools and offices close for the day. Busy roads and centres of industry are deserted and quiet whilst parks, gardens and cul-de-sacs become hives of activity rich with joyous sounds. Crunching footsteps, laughter, the wisp, thud and dissolve of flying snowballs.

The sounds of commerce replaced by those of play.