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Snow in dreams: what it can mean

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The short answer

Snow can feel peaceful, clean and new, or cold, isolating and hard to move through. Which one you felt usually matters more than the snow.

Your dream is not everyone's

Tell it the way you remember it. You get a reading about your dream and your life, not a dictionary entry.

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

The continuity view holds that dreams dramatize waking concerns with images that fit their mood. Snow suits both stillness and being stuck: a blank page, a pause, or a feeling of emotional coldness. Dream researchers also stress that setting and weather often mirror the dreamer's feeling rather than carry a meaning of their own, so the emotion is the best place to start.

Classic texts

History

Artemidorus discussed weather, including snow, ice and hail, with attention to season and to the dreamer's work. Snow in its proper season was ordinary and even welcome to farmers; weather out of season he took as a sign of hindrance to plans. Like most of his readings, it depends on context rather than a fixed meaning.

Folk tradition

Tradition, not science

Tradition: American popular dream books, around 1900

Miller's 1901 dream dictionary read being caught in a snowstorm as sorrow and disappointment, and clean, bright snow as a better sign. We report it as one old tradition's reading, not a prediction.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. Did the snow feel like a fresh start or like being snowed in?
  2. Where in your life are things on pause right now?
  3. Who or what feels a little cold toward you, or you toward it?

Related symbols

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. G. William Domhoff (2001). A New Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams. Dreaming 11(1): 13-33.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 13-33 (dreams as simulations of personal concerns) (reference not yet checked)

    Dreams as embodied simulations of personal concerns (the continuity view). The backbone of our psychology lens.

  2. Calvin S. Hall, Robert L. Van de Castle (1966). The Content Analysis of Dreams. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: coding categories: settings (reference not yet checked)

    The standard coding system for dream content (characters, social interactions, misfortunes, emotions, settings, objects) and its normative sample.

  3. Artemidorus of Daldis (1644). The Interpretation of Dreams (Oneirocritica), in five books, translated by Robert Wood. London.

    first published 2nd century CE

    public domain

    • Cited at: Book II, on weather (snow, ice and hail) (reference not yet checked)

    Greek dream manual from the Roman era. We paraphrase the public-domain Wood translation (1644). Modern translations (White 1975, Harris-McCoy 2012, Hammond 2020) are copyrighted and only cited.

  4. Gustavus Hindman Miller (1901). What's in a Dream (later reissued as Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted).

    public domain

    • Cited at: entry: Snow (reference not yet checked)

    An American popular dream dictionary. Its entries are written as omens ("foretells"); we only report how people once read a symbol, never as a forecast.