How many kilograms of snow are there in Austria?

Answer

Dear Ronald,

Nice question! It is difficult to give a precise answer to this, but we can try to estimate in order of magnitude. A lot of snow has fallen in Austria this winter, so for our example let’s consider the situation after a heavy snowfall.

The area of ​​Austria is about 84,000 square kilometers (km²), or 84 billion square meters (84,000,000,000 m²). For example, if we assume that for our situation three quarters (75%) of the country is covered with snow, then this is an area of ​​84 x 0.75 = 63 billion square meters (63 billion square meters)²). At an average snow thickness of half a meter (0.5 m) (in the valleys it will be less, high in the mountains more), the total snow volume is 0.5 x 63 = 31.5 billion cubic meters (31,500,000,000 m³, or 31,500,000,000,000 litres). Finally, to convert this to a weight, we need to use the mass density of snow. For fresh snow, this is about 300 kg per cubic meter (300 kg / m³). By the way, this is much less than for water (1000 kg / m³): for example, if you fill a bottle with fresh snow, its mass (if we don’t consider the mass of the bottle itself) will be less than one third than if you filled it with water!

To determine the snow mass, we multiply the volume (31,500,000,000 cubic meters) by the density (300 kg per cubic meter). We then obtain a mass of 9,450,000,000,000 kg, or almost 10 trillion kilograms of snow. As already indicated, this is only an (order of magnitude) estimate, because there is a large uncertainty on 2 parameters: the percentage of Austria that is covered with snow and the average thickness of this snow layer. As an exercise you can adjust the chosen values ​​(75% and 0.5 meters) yourself and see how this will affect the total Austrian snow mass. For example, if you look at the situation in summer, you can estimate by assuming that 0.1% of Austria is covered with snow (only the high peaks) and that the average snow depth is 10 cm (0.1 m). The total snow mass will then be much smaller than in this solved example.

Hopefully I was able to help you with your quirky question!

Kind regards,
Harry