The first time, I was 7 and it snowed overnight in Florida (a little). I saw it and ran in to wake my mom up but she kept saying “it’s frost, go back to bed”. She also made me go to school and the only other kids in my class were 2 kids from Michigan.
I was 20 when I first saw snow falling from the sky. Was in England, looked out the window and panicked because I thought there was ash falling from the sky. Asked what was burning and my boyfriend (Scottish) said “That’s snooo, lass”.
Ethiopian here, first time I saw snow I was 18, during freshman year of uni in the US. I remember seeing snow outside my dorm window for the first time one morning. Got excited and ran outside to experience it. I was disappointed when I felt the snow and realized it was wet and cold. Grateful to be back in the warmer weather :)
We moved from Texas to Minnesota in February when I was 6.
There were huge snow banks and while the movers were loading our stuff into the new house, the neighborhood kids were watching from behind the snow banks, all bundled up in snowsuits, hats, scarves, etc.
I, very logically thought they were snow monsters watching us…
Not the first time I saw snow as I grew up on the Scottish Highlands and have had it since a baby, but I do remember someone else’s. My parents had a guest house and I remember one Christmas eve day around the living room with my family on Christmas Eve when it starts dumping snow, “nice, it’ll be a white Christmas” we all thought.
Then we heard a bunch of noise coming from the front car park, we peak out the curtains to see a family staying with us from somewhere is Africa, I can’t recall where but it was obviously their first time seeing snow, they were so excited, running outside on their pyjamas at 2300.
They were making snowballs, rolling around in the snow trying to make snow angels and on their hands and knees making snowmen.
My family just watched and chuckled as those outside slowly realised how cold and wet snow is. Within minutes the whole family was drenched and shivering and running back inside.
But for them it was a magical moment, makes me smile thinking back to it.
Not of the first time, unfortunately. I was pretty young and my first experiences were not very memorable.
But when I was 13/14 I think, I went on a Boy Scout trip to the Lava Bed national park in Oregon. Our first night there, it snowed like 3 feet. Woke up to our tent buried somewhat. Sometimes later that day I was in a little clearing by myself trying to make a snowman and a deer and two foals wandered by and came up to sniff and lick me before taking off. I always call it my Disney Princess moment.
I don’t recall the earliest memories or stories, but I remember at my elementary school, large snow banks would pile up on the playground area and made for amazing things to play on in the winter. They weren’t uniform either, making them fun for kids to climb all over since some of it would freeze solid while other parts wouldn’t. They were kinda like a seasonal jungle gym of their own.
That, and at the middle school near where I lived, we’d always go there for sledding because there was a hill in the very back corner of the place that was perfect for it. One night while sledding my dad decided to go down the hill on our old toboggan with our husky-malmute rescue and she absolutely did not like it one bit.
Those are the earliest memories/stories I can recall.
I was five or six and it started snowing while I was in class at school and I got in trouble because it was distracting me to see and the teacher didn’t understand I hadn’t seen snow before. Frustratingly my punishment was that I couldn’t have playground time, which would’ve gotten me acquainted with the snow some more, so a week later it began to snow again and the cycle continued one more time, except this time I snuck out to see this snow and got into more trouble.
As someone years went by my relationship with snow would change… completely.
Though this reminds me that I remember getting my first skis. But don’t remember learning to ski in particular. Skis and snow has just always been there. I think I know where they are still today.
The first was an exchange student from Ecuador who attended my high school. She actually cried. The other time she told me she cried was when she started dreaming in English instead of Spanish.
The second was a girl I knew in college who had moved up from Florida to attend Ohio State. The first snow that year was that dry snow that blows around, but there was enough of it that everything was covered.
Walking back to our dorm, she kept gathering up handfuls, trying to make a snowball, and she asked if we could make a snowman. We told her it wouldn’t work because this is not snowman snow, and she was mystified. “There’s snowman snow??”
First time we had that good, heavy, wet, sticky snow, we took her out and made a 7-foot-tall snowman haha
I wonder what my sisters exchange students would have said if they had encountered snow on their visit. They were here during the summer, wearing jumpers and hoodies and still freezing…
I grew up with a lot of snow, skiing, etc in the PNW. As an adult I moved to Palm Springs, where my daughter was born. She and my friends had never seen snow, so one day I thought it’d be great to show everyone. We took the tram up to the top of Mt San Jacinto, where there was about a foot of fresh snow.
I loved watching them marvel at how oddly cold and bright the ground was. They tried and failed to copy me making snowballs, like it was some alien magic trick. I ran ahead and made a sliding jump down a small slope, then stopped and turned around, waiting for them to follow. They did, one at a time, and every one of them slipped and dramatically wiped out trying to navigate the slope. Gods, they just kept. coming. down.
I was horrified that I’d accidentally set them up to go careening everywhere, but the sight was too hilarious and I could only double over and belly laugh as they all crashed about like lemmings on ice!
Not me, had some friends from India and got to see them see their first snow in real life. It was actually more interesting to go snow coat, hat, gloves shopping. Hearing them talk about what thought would be the most important features of winter gear was interesting. For example, I would pay a lot of attention to the quality and function of the zipper, as that has often been the first failure point for me. The one boy just did not want poofiness and got the thinnest, flattest coat he could find. The other wanted a coat with some American baseball team on it, any team, didn’t matter which so long as it was baseball.
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