# Can snowballs really snowball?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 7, 2008, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319 "2008-04-07T15:53:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319/1 "2008-04-07T15:53:07Z")
Having lived in Southern California all my life, except for a year in Germany when we had only a few light snowballs, my experience with snow is quite limited. I’d like to know if what I saw in TV cartoons as a little kid really works. If I let a snowball go from the top of a hill, will it really get bigger and bigger? Can a typical snowball, maybe four inches in diameter, really grow to gargantuan proportions of a foot or more across?
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### Author:  [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319/2 "2008-04-07T15:57:06Z")
Of course they can and they can become way bigger than a foot across. It takes some rather wet and heavy snow however. They can become the size of a small car under the right conditions. If you want to see something even weirder, check out naturally made snow donuts.
> **[Snow Doughnuts Are the Real Thing](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8993287)**
>
> At first glance, a snow doughnut may look like a man-made creation. But Mike Stanford, who snapped a photo of one in Washington state, assures Robert Siegel that snow doughnuts are real — but rare — natural occurences.
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### Author:  [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319/3 "2008-04-07T16:30:54Z")
A warning for those who want to try this: on a lawn, the lowest layer of snow may be ice that is frozen around the grass. If your ball gets pick enough, you start ripping out the lawn. This is bad.
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### Author:  [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319/4 "2008-04-07T16:37:28Z")
A foot across is not what I’d call gargantuan. It’s just half the size needed for the bottom of a snowman. And you probably want to start with a largeish ball in the first place. Unless the surface is very smooth, and the snow cover really thin, a hand sized snowball will stop almost imediately.
What cartoons fail to show are all the myriad ways self-increasing snowballs can fail catastrophically.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319/5 "2008-04-07T16:42:36Z")
They tend not to remain spherical (in my experience) - they will tend to rotate about an axis and end up picking up an ever-widening flat layer of snow, ending up looking like a cylinder with dimpled ends.
To get actual balls of snow, human management is normally necessary - changing the axis periodically so as to built up the ball evenly all over (a bit like rolling a ball of string).
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### Author:  [@Danger\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danger_Man)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319/6 "2008-04-07T17:09:04Z")
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtEgsFw_HaQ)
Someone rolling a snowball. They tend to collapse as they pick up speed and get too big.
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This is a snow man I made last winter.
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### Author:  [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319/7 "2008-04-07T17:26:12Z")
Check out the Google Search on [snow wheels](http://images.google.com/images?as_q=snow+wheel).
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### Author:  [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319/8 "2008-04-07T17:30:58Z")
Thanks everyone. Question answered.
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### Author:  [@Subway\_Prophet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subway_Prophet)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-snowballs-really-snowball/444319/9 "2008-04-07T19:39:17Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty]
Of course they can and they can become way bigger than a foot across. It takes some rather wet and heavy snow however. They can become the size of a small car under the right conditions. If you want to see something even weirder, check out naturally made snow donuts.
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8993287](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8993287)
[/QUOTE]
I’ve seen these on the side of mountainy backroads around Cedar City, UT. The usually didn’t get bigger than about a foot in diameter. When I describe them, most people look at me like I just said I saw Sasquatch with a bad case of Morgellons Disease.
I didn’t call them donuts, though. I called them Lifesaver-shaped. Maybe that helps explain the funny looks I got?
On preview: based on the low number of these things in **Duckster’s** Google Image search, not many other people see them, either.