Snowfall

Snowfall is an element in the game. Much like rain, it is a type of weather. It currently exists in the full version of the game.

Behavior
Snowfall happens occasionally and falls only in the Tundra and Taiga biome. It causes water that does not have a block above it to become ice, as well as gradually covering all blocks in snow with the exception of transparent blocks. Snowfall will happen at the same time as rain is falling. If you are between a biome that produces rain and another that produces snow, you can see both snow and rain.

Rain and snow

 * Rain and snowfall are temporary, biome specific occurrences.
 * During rain and snow, thunderstorms become possible.
 * Rain and snowfalls decrease the light level by 3, to light level 12 in full daylight.
 * When the player is under the surface, snow will make the same sound that rain does, giving the impression that it is raining when it is actually snowing.

Snowfall only

 * Snow regenerates whilst snowing.


 * In the 1.9 pre-release, snowfall would destroy redstone wire, torches, saplings and minecart rails. This was fixed in pre-release 5.

History
Snowfall was reintroduced in Beta 1.5 after having been removed during Alpha with the Halloween Update. Prior to the Halloween Update, as multiple biomes per world had not yet been introduced, worlds were generated with either continual snowfall or no snow at all.

Trivia

 * If it is snowing and you go to sleep, it will most likely have stopped before you wake.
 * When it rains, it also snows in different biomes, despite the fact that the effects of each are not similar (Snowfall generating snow/re-frosting ice, and rainfall causing thunderstorms from time to time).
 * On fancy graphic settings, there are far more snowflakes falling than fast graphics. The reason for this is unknown.
 * If you look directly upwards, you will see that no snow seems to be falling in the chunk you are in.