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In the last winters in the Alps, both in Italy and abroad, avalanches have caused many deaths amongst backcountry skiers. According to the press and TV all the victims were "expert in snowy mountain environments" and all the accidents were caused by "exceptional temperatures" (so that new snow could not adhere to the preexistent layer), by their disregarding risk notices based on the "international risk scale" (forgetting that it evaluates the average general situation, and cannot take into consideration every variable connected with local peculiarities) or, even, by the inscrutable "destiny" (as it is impossible to forsee when, where and why the avalanche is triggered).
No interviewer or interviewee ever mentioned that snow is a "live" matter, whose structure varies from hour to hour according to meteorological and environmental conditions, and that such variations, on which its stability on a slope is based, can be easily verified in order to operate in complete safety, or at least be able to evaluate whether to risk or not.
Aim of this web site is to spread the knowledge of snow under its various aspects: physical, dynamic, ecological. The project will necessarily be developed in instalments, starting with notions of general nivology and getting on to more specialistic subjects; "in progress" updating will be inevitable, not only for rectifications and necessary additions but also in order to inform about news found in international bibliography or reported by our readers, with whom we would like to interact, with discussions or requests for explanations as well.
Besides its socio-economic and/or biological aspects, snow can and should be appreciated also from other points of view: from the aesthetic to landscape,
from the ricreative and playful to the curious.
Snow is "life", both in the biological and in the economic (that is, winter tourism) sense, but we have to discover its secrets because, as Matthias Zdarskj said, "snow isn't a wolf under a sheep skin, but a tiger disguised as a lamb".
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