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Snowfall in the News, 2019–2026: Seasonality, Geography and Tone of Global Coverage of Snowfall, Snowstorms and Blizzards, and How It Compares with Research and Invention

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: We measure how snowfall, snowstorms and blizzards were covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 84,266 de-duplicated articles, and set that coverage beside 2,068 research papers (2015–2025) and 435 patent families (2015–2024) on the same subject. Six results stand out: Seasonality. On average 59.76% of each year's snowfall coverage appears in December, January and February. June, July and August hold 5.57%. Attention, not occurrence. Snowfall's share of news ranged from 4.08 to 7.97 articles per 10,000 between 2019 and 2025, and was 39.4% lower in 2025 than in 2019. Its monthly share peaked in January 2026, the month of the January 23–27 North American winter storm, at 26.53 articles per 10,000. Geography. The United States holds 54.77% of located snowfall news (lift 1.13) and India 23.08% (lift 1.75). Nepal (3.61) is the most over-represented country; Europe as a whole is under-represented (0.62). Within India, Himachal Pradesh (27.45), Jammu and Kashmir (10.45) and Sikkim (10.34) lead; within the United States, Nebraska (3.55), Maine (3.16) and Colorado (3.04) lead among states whose tags are not distorted by place-name errors. Tone and themes. 67% of snowfall articles are negative in tone (all news: 33.6%). Travel disruption appears in 21.22% of themed articles, 150.47 times its rate in all news. Measurement. 21.24% of raw matches for snowfall vocabulary were other senses of the words (a video-game company, a hacking group, a television series), figurative uses or templated alerts. Research and invention. Snowfall papers fell from 0.34 to 0.23 per 10,000 papers between 2015 and 2025. Patent families are few (435 in ten years), and China's office held 65.9% of their filings.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23445710
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222881174
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