Tips for mud, and whats under snow?

Snow falls out of the air to the ground -- just like rain.  Anything on the ground at the time the snow begins to fall will be covered by the snow.

You should be able to use Google Images to find several pix of Tigers in the snow.

It depends on te area, time of year and temp. Early winter ground will be soft=mud, mid to late winter ground will be frozen=no or little mud. Temp changes also affect this too. The grass does not exactly die out to yellow but becomes a mix of green and yellow grass.

Snow compresses before it can melt if there's any depth to it. A leyer of much more than a few inches (10 or so Cm), which is about ten times the depth in rain, will be compacted to ice lolng before you see the ground under it. Up here, if a street insn't treated during and/or plowed right after a storm and if the temps stay below freezing, you will have ruts, but not be able to see the asphalt, sometimes for weeks at a time. 

 While the statement about mud in the early winter may be true under some circumstances, depending on how cold it's been before the snow, you may have completely frozen ground. There have been times when the ground was completely frozen hard long before any snow fell at all. If you see grass at all, it will be a seer brown/dark yellow though if it's an early snow, it could still be green.

Here are a couple examples from the web.

Deep snow after a vehicle has passed.

Light snow on a rutted field. Note the grass color.

Unplowed road after much traffic.

Tigers in the snow:

We don't get a lot of snow here in South Carolina but I did live in Colorado for over a year.  I noticed that the snow would insulate the ground.  Meaning that if you dug past the snow the ground would be soft.  But of course if you left it uncovered the ground would freeze in the night.  Where the roads were the ground would also be frozen since the snow was removed.  We did have snow on the ground from Nov to Apr.

thanks for the info, very helpful

Andrew

Snow is dynamic and litteraly changes by the hour. As mencioned above it depends on how froze the ground was before the snow came, rain followed by sleet then shush turns the ground into mud or 'quagmire' Just like the fall of 41' on the eastern front. The more it is traveled on the worse the sticky goo becomes, eventually impassable. Wet clay is like glue and even walking is very difficult.  Yes it is a insulator, temperatures below -10 celcus eventually stiffen and freeze the ground below. Tracked vehicles in motion creates heat on final drive and rollers, any mud snow or debries stick and MUST be removed when vehicle is parked for the day to prevent freeze up. Many Tiger tanks had the front road wheel removed to axcess the drive sprocket for cleaning.  

Hate to double dip' Just had issue w/ getting a pic...*Front outer of Tiger's road wheels are removed as in last picture by 'EasyMike' Regarding my photo the ground is froze below the snow as its a spring time depiction of winter, Hungary 45' The Jagpanzer is heavy enough to uncover the dirt under the snow as it compacts, sticks to tracks and thrown about. The footprints are not and just look like depressions in the snow  with no dirt showing.