snow

The 2010 snowmobile season, which begins this month, will see daredevils in places they couldn’t reach before: in deeper powder, on remote cliffs, squeezing between trees. That’s because the first full air-suspension sled swaps the usual heavy steel coils for air-filled shock absorbers, creating a smoother, 20-pounds-lighter machine. Riders can easily steer the FX Nytro MTX SE 162 with their weight, glide it nearly drag-free through powder, and unstick it from drifts.

Controlling the weather with cloud seeding has previously proved popular with Chinese and Russian officials, but Moscow's mayor does not seem content with just keeping the rain off his roofs. Now Mayor Yury Luzhkov has hired the cash-strapped Russian Air Force to chemically spray clouds so that no snow will fall within his city limits.

Even with a vehicle that has 4WD and high clearance, there are a few times each winter when I can't make it up my 1,000-foot-long driveway without a little extra help. Usually that means untangling a set of ice-cold chains and then trying to secure them to my wheels before my fingers go numb...all while holding a flashlight between my teeth. Chaining up is never as quick or as easy as the instructions would suggest.

In a Mars exploration milestone, a laser remote sensing instrument on the Phoenix Mars lander has detected snow falling on the red planet. Data from the light detection and ranging (lidar) instrument—designed to gather information about interactions between the Martian atmosphere and ground surface—showed the snow falling from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft's landing site.