I see this fine drifting snow in the air ten or twelve feet high at a distance.

January 26. 

Up river on ice 9 A.M. There is a little thin ice on the meadows.  I see the bubbles underneath, looking like coin. A slight, fine, snow has fallen in the night and drifted before the wind. I observe that it is so distributed over the ice as to show equal spaces of bare ice and of snow at pretty regular distances. I have seen the same phenomenon on the surface of snow in fields, as if the surface of the snow disposed itself according to the same law that makes waves of water. There is now a fine steam-like snow blowing over the ice, which continually lodges here and there, and forthwith a little drift accumulates. But why does it lodge at such regular intervals? 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 26, 1853