Snow cover suppresses low-frequency reverberation by absorbing sound and smoothing terrain.

Evidence

Two sites, site 3 and site 6, have reverberative energy at lower frequencies than expected in the summer measurements (see Fig. 8). At site 3, the terrain was quite rough, and there were several large trees on the ground. This topography is the right scale to support reverberation in the 63 and 100 Hz octave bands. The absence of this characteristic in the winter measurements could be attributed to the significant (13–20 cm) snow cover. This snow cover both attenuates sound in those frequencies efficiently and smooths out the rough terrain. — Donald G. Albert, Michelle E. Swearingen, Frank E. Perron, and David L. Carbee, Low Frequency Acoustic Pulse…, 100

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to acoustic ecology and soundscape work on how weather and substrate reshape a landscape’s sonic signature.
• STORYSTEM: A forest that sounds different under snow — a character who navigates or hides by listening for reverberation in winter, and finds the world acoustically dead.