Dreaming about snow
Snow is reported for silence more than for cold. Dreamers describe the quiet of it first and the temperature rarely, which is consistent with how weakly dreams reproduce temperature at all.
Also searched as: snowing, snow in a dream, a blizzard, walking in snow, deep snow
Silence is the most consistently reported feature, and dreamers mention it unprompted. A snowed landscape in a dream is described as soundless.
Cold is reported far less often than the image would suggest, and where it is, the sleeping environment is worth checking: a cold room genuinely produces cold dreams.
Difficulty moving through deep snow is a distinct group and belongs with the effort-without-effect material rather than with weather.
Snow covering something, so that a familiar place is unrecognisable, is a fourth pattern and dreamers report it as disorienting rather than pretty.
Common associations
- Silence, which is what the reports actually contain.
- Covering and concealment, in the unrecognisable-landscape reports.
- Effort, in the deep-snow ones.
- Stillness, which dreamers describe as the mood rather than the weather.
Positive readings
Fresh snow is among the more consistently pleasant images in the database and dreamers describe it with real calm.
The silence is frequently reported as the best part, which is unusual: sound is under-represented in dreams generally, so its deliberate absence is notable.
Difficult readings
The buried-landscape version produces the same unease as any familiar place made strange, and it belongs with the getting-lost material.
Deep snow that will not let you move is a pursuit dream in a different coat.
Psychological perspectives
Temperature is weakly represented in dream reports, which is why snow arrives as an image and a silence rather than as cold.
Where cold is genuinely reported, incorporation is the likely explanation and it is testable: a cold room produces cold dreams reliably enough for dreamers to notice.
The silence is worth flagging. Dreams generate sound less than vision, so a dream that specifically features an absence of sound is doing something unusual with a medium it already uses sparingly.
Cultural and historical
Snow carries no single tradition, largely because a great many cultures have never seen it, which makes it a useful example of a dream image whose availability is geographic.
Where it does appear in tradition it tends towards purity, covering and death, and those are regional rather than universal.
What the sleep science says
Reasonably supported: temperature and other bodily sensations can be incorporated into dream content.
Well documented: auditory content is less frequent in dreams than visual content.
Not established: any meaning for snow.
Your own context
- Was it silent?
- Were you cold, and was the room?
- Could you move through it?
- Was the place recognisable?
If this recurs
Log the temperature of the room alongside it. Dreamers who do this frequently find a straightforward correspondence, which is more useful than any reading.
Emotions often reported
- calm
- peace
- wonder
- loneliness
- unease
- fatigue
Specific snow dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
What happened
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Was it quiet?
- Was I cold, and was the room?
- Did I recognise where I was?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
3 references. What these labels mean
- 1.Gender Differences in Dream Recall: A Meta-AnalysisPeer-reviewed research
Michael Schredl and Iris Reinhard (2008) · Journal of Sleep Research
Cited for: Dream-recall frequency as a measurable, individually stable trait, and the factors that move it.
- 2.The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development and Content AnalysisAcademic book
G. William Domhoff (2003) · American Psychological Association
Cited for: The continuity hypothesis (that dream content largely reflects waking concerns) and a sustained critique of symbolic dream interpretation as an evidential method.
- 3.The Content Analysis of DreamsAcademic book
Calvin Hall and Robert Van de Castle (1966) · Appleton-Century-Crofts
Cited for: The standard coding system for dream content, and the normative frequencies that later studies are compared against. The reason claims like "aggression is more common in dreams than friendliness" can be stated numerically at all.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of snow have gone for other people, in their own words. Nothing here is an interpretation of anyone else's dream. It is a record of what happened and what it was like.
Nothing here yet. Be the first to say how this has gone for you.
Related records
- ActionGetting lostDistinct from searching, which is looking for a thing. This is not knowing where you are, and the reports centre on a specific and quite eerie experience: a place you know well that has stopped being navigable.
- SymbolRainRain is one of the most common weather conditions in dream reports and one of the least dramatic. It usually sets the tone rather than driving the dream, and the reported feeling ranges from cleansing to grim with no consistent pattern.
- SymbolFogFog is reported less often than rain or storms and is more consistent in what it does: it removes information. The reports are about not being able to see rather than about anything in the fog.
- ColourWhiteThe clearest case in this database of a colour that cannot have one meaning: white is the colour of weddings in much of the West and of mourning in parts of East Asia. Any entry that picks one is describing a culture and calling it a dream.
- SymbolStairsStairs are among the most common architectural features in dream reports, and the reported difficulty is usually with the stairs themselves: too steep, too narrow, endless, or not quite where they should be.
- SymbolA crackCracks are one of the few things dreams reliably show growing, which is unusual: dreams produce states far more readily than transitions, and a spreading crack is a transition being watched.
Records that mention snow
These pages link to snow, either as something reported in the same dream or as a related subject. This page does not point back at all of them, so the list is assembled rather than chosen.