Snow Moon: February's full moon

Where the name Snow Moon comes from

The Old Farmer’s Almanac gives one of its more specific origin stories for February. In the 1760s Captain Jonathan Carver traveled in the interior of North America and wrote about the peoples he visited, among them the Naudowessie (the Dakota). According to the almanac, Carver recorded that this moon was named for snow, because more snow usually falls in February than in any other winter month. The Farmers’ Almanac, a separate publication based in Maine, gives the same reason: heavy snow across much of northern North America.

Carver’s account is a colonial traveler’s record, written in English, of what he understood from people speaking other languages. It is a real historical source, but it is a secondhand one. It is also one thread among several. The popular twelve-name list mixes names recorded this way with colonial and European names, and almanacs pinned each one to a calendar month. Many Indigenous moon names described a whole lunar month, and they varied by nation, region and dialect. The full moon names overview covers how the list came together.

Other names for February’s full moon

The Old Farmer’s Almanac attributes these names to specific nations. The attributions are the almanac’s, and we have not confirmed them independently.

• Bald Eagle Moon or Eagle Moon: Cree.
• Bear Moon: Ojibwe.
• Black Bear Moon: Tlingit.
• Raccoon Moon: Dakota.
• Groundhog Moon: certain Algonquin peoples, in the almanac’s wording.
• Goose Moon: Haida.
• Month of the Bony Moon and Hungry Moon: Cherokee.

Indian Country Today (ICT), a Native-run news outlet, lists an Ojibwe name for this time of year, Namebini-giizis, the Sucker Moon.

ICT quotes the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa on that name. In their teaching, the sucker fish gave its life to feed the people when hunger was worst at the turn from January to February, and February was when women netted more suckers through the ice. ICT’s other lists show how much February varies. The Dakota name, Wičhá thawí (Raccoons’ Moon), matches the almanac’s Raccoon Moon. The Oneida call the month Midwinter, and the 1890s Cherokee seminary calendar gives Kagali, the Stationary Moon, rather than the almanac’s Hungry or Bony Moon.

Two things stand out in this list. Several names point to hunger and scarcity: by February, stored food was running low and game was thin. Others mark animals, such as bears, eagles and raccoons, whose habits change as winter wears on. The almanac also lists “Snow Moon” as a December name for the Haida and Cherokee. That is a good example of the same English phrase landing in different months in different traditions.

What makes the Snow Moon notable

February’s full moon still rides high across the sky, though not quite as high as January’s or December’s. A full moon sits opposite the Sun, and the late-winter Sun is still low, so the full moon stays up for most of a long night.

February is also the only month that can skip a full moon entirely. The cycle of phases takes about 29.5 days, which NASA calls the synodic month, and February has only 28 or 29 days. Every so often, a full moon falls at the very end of January and the next one comes at the start of March. In those years there is no Snow Moon in February at all. The table above shows which February nights in the coming years have one.

How to watch the Snow Moon

Watch it rise. A full moon comes up in the east close to sunset, and the table above gives the moonrise time for major cities on the best evening. Get to a place with a low, open eastern horizon, such as a frozen lake, a field or a hilltop, and arrive a few minutes early.

Just after it rises, the Moon will look strikingly large. NASA calls this the Moon illusion: the Moon is no wider on the horizon than it is overhead. One test is to cover it with your fingernail at arm’s length, once at moonrise and again later in the evening. It will cover the Moon the same way both times. The orange color at moonrise is real, though. Low moonlight passes through a long path of air, which scatters away the bluer light.

On a snowy night the whole landscape lights up, because fresh snow reflects moonlight so well. That makes the full moon a good night for a guided snowshoe or ski outing. It is a poor night for faint stars, so save those for the dark weeks around new moon. Our city sky pages show which nights are moon-free.