Why is there so little snow?

[Licoracius]

I'm playing a world in its 3rd winter, and most parts of the world have very little snow cover, much less than in the previous years. This is despite the rainfall reading of "Common". In the attached screenshot, I'm standing in an area with common rainfall, same as the snow covered area. Month is January, and temperature currently stays well below 0. So, my expectation would be that the world covered by snow, but it isn't. It's also of note that I had this world since 2024, and it has gone through several game versions. The lack of snowfall was first visible in 1.21.0.

Am I just unlucky, or is there something more to it?
 

[Rainbow Fresh]

I am not sure to what extent, if any, the game "catch-up" calculates snow or ice - but seeing this and the discussions about slow melting ice makes me thing it's not.
In that case, there will only be snow in parts of the world where you actively load in chunks while it is snowing. Same with snow melting, with you potentially running into snowy chunks in the middle of 30+°C summer because the chunk was never updated and so snow melting never processed until then.

[Licoracius]

I don't think I've entered the snowy chunks before, and even if I did, they'd have been regenerated when I ran /db prune on the upgrade to 1.22.2. 

[Maelstrom]

Frequency of rainfall affects snow as well.   If the rainfall is less than common snow may not accumulate very much.

 

PS - Hopefully you had a successful prospecting expedition.

 

[Licoracius]

4 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Frequency of rainfall affects snow as well.   If the rainfall is less than common snow may not accumulate very much.

 

PS - Hopefully you had a successful prospecting expedition.

 

Yeah. basically, in the winter, precipitation turns to snowfall instead of rain, and that is then on the ground. I suppose what I'm wondering is, why does is there less snowfall/precipitation than the years before. One explanation could be that I just got a drought for some reason. Though, according to the wiki, "Common" rainfall means it 0.45 - 0.70 rainfall. If that means that it rains 45% to 70% of the time, then making it all the way to January without snow cover is a one in a thousand chance.

PS - the prospecting expedition was succesful in that I found an area which is likely to contain Halite.

[williams_482]

I'm not familiar with the code, but don't think the decimal rainfall numbers should be interpreted as percentage rates of overall rainfall. Anecdotally, "common" rainfall seems like it's a probably in the ~30% rainfall range. I try to settle in "common" rainfall areas because constant rainfall gets kinda depressing, and a solid majority of days near these homes are dry. For context I'd ballpark "almost all the time" as something in the area of 60% rainfall, a credible seeming amount of precipitation but far from constant. 

I have definitely had the experience of going out exploring for a couple days in early winter with no snow on the ground when I leave, and coming home to find a snow layer. Often in those cases there are prominent square borders of chunks which were just barely cold enough for snow / not cold enough for snow. I think the game does a quick "catch up" calculation on chunk load where it checks the temp and if there was precipitation when you were out, then places snow as appropriate. 

[LadyWYT]

I'm wondering if it doesn't have something to do with the microclimate for the chunks. In my current world, I had a temperate start and settled in a nice spot a short walk from spawn, in an area that I think counts as warmer due to the presence of walnut trees and a couple of peach trees a little further to the south. Currently, it's the end of December moving into January, and while the temperature has dropped a little below freezing, it's not snowed in the area around my base(though there is snow a little further to the north). The polar-equator distance is default as well.