It never occurred to me. I hardly see any footage of it snowing on the water. And I have not seen or read of any account wherein the deck of a ship got several feet of snow overnight, even in books relating to the polar exploration(s). Yeah, I see decks, guns and other topside equipment getting iced up but that’s it.
Yes I can comfirm it snows at sea, my last ship was tasked with bringing couple hundred Royal Marines back from Norway. This was Febuary/March and yes it snowed.
How high can snow drifts reach?
generally sea level… However onboard the deck department try and get snow/ice over the side as it can cause instability in the ship.
I would have thought it would cause major safety issue far before the any stability issue.
not really, in that weather the ship is pretty much locked down, worst issue is visability, but with radar… The upper decks will be rarely used, only the odd brave smoker making a dash to smoking area. The wind generally getsrid of most of the snow, any excess the deck department deal with it.
Very much so. In the Arctic convoys of the second world war it was quite a problem.
As depicted there, the problem has much more to do with frozen spray than with snow.
The issue is accumulating enough additional weight that the ship’s stability is compromised, perhaps fatally. Snow is generally a lot easier to get rid of than ice.
Generally costal climates mean milder winters because the ocean is a giant heat reservoir. Off shore weather is even milder and more stable compared to the same latitude on land, so to get snow on ships you need to be quite far north. Adding to that there’s how precipitation requires moist air, which you get less of in the extreme polar regions, and unstable air masses, which you get less of in the open sea, and you get less snow. McMurdo Station in Antarctica gets about 200 mm (liquid equivalents) of precipitation (presumably all show) per year, spread relatively evenly across the months.
Oh, and it’s often windy at sea and unlike on land where the snow that gets blown off your patio piles up against the neighbours walls, snow that gets blown off a deck rarely piles up against the side of the ship next to it.