Saturday, November 20, 2010

Whatchumacallit

In the Sierra foothills where I live we get a moderate amount of snow; usually enough for kids to enjoy, but not enough for people to get snowed in.
But sometimes we get a kind of weather that doesn't really have a name when several kinds of precipitation happen at the same time or alternate quickly. Slush is a combination of water and ice like slushies, but that doesn't really describe what I'm talking about.
If it snows and rains at the same time that could be called snain. If it rains and hails at the same time we might call it rail. And a logical name for the combination of snow and hail might be snail? No, those last two words wouldn't work because they're already taken to mean other things.
And what word could we use when all three happen at once? Snorail? Raihanow? Haisnain?
Come on, there has to be a better word to use than slush.

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