…Okay, from the title, you can probably guess that I don’t see a lot of snow in my neck of the woods. My last concrete memory of actually touching the stuff was in 2004. (It was wetter than I expected. That shouldn’t be very surprising, I guess, but since my experience with snow has mostly been theoretical, not anticipating the visceral nuance of the experience can perhaps be forgiven)
But, anyway, being in the middle of a big-ish rainstorm at the moment (and hatless), for some reason, I started wondering: does one’s hair get wet if you walk out into moderate snow fall?
That’s…it, I guess. And I suppose that’s assuming that the answer won’t vary that much with different weather conditions and kinds of snow. But I really have no idea.
If the snow melts, your hair will get wet. If you shake it off while it’s still frozen, it won’t. Depending on how thick your hair is (i.e. how far the cushion of hair is away from your scalp), it will usually tend to just sit on top. Since cold and wet feel kind of the same, I’d answer this question by saying, “not very”.
It depends on the snow and how long it’s on. I’ve had my hair dripping after being in the snow, and I’ve had the snow just brush off. Wet snow, dry snow, length of time on your head, heat radiating from your head, OAT, etc. … Lots of variables.
If it’s really cold, your hair won’t get wet at all. In fact, if it’s really cold and you walk outside with wet hair, your hair will almost instantly freeze, resulting in an interestingly crusty hairdo. Really cold for these purposes means -30 or colder (actual temp, not counting wind chill). Course at those temperatures it rarely snows.
As others have said, assuming it’s cold enough outside to be snowing (as opposed to snow/sleet, sleet or freezing rain), it usually just kinda sits on top of your head. It’ll be cold as hell, but not usually wet. The trick is to make sure your brush it off once you get inside, or your hair will get wet.
It might need to be that cold to do it instantly. But back when I was in high school my hair rountinley froze on the 10 minute walk to school as long as it was about 15 or so out.
It depends on how long you’re outside and how much it’s snowing; powdery snow isn’t going to get you nearly as wet as heavy wet snow will.
It was snowing heavily when I was outside this weekend clearing off my car and shoveling the steps; we’d gotten 10" so the task took about 20 minutes. I wore a hat, but my hair is long, so I got quite a lot of snow in my hair. Despite shaking out as much snow as I could as soon as I got in, it was still dripping wet from the nape of my neck down to my mid-back…not quite as wet as if I’d just gotten out of the shower, but close.