Look up tonight to see February's Full Snow Moon
The 'Snow Moon' certainly lives up to the name across Canada this year!
Have clear skies tonight? Take a moment to observe the night sky and the Full Snow Moon.
The Full Moon will be up all night, from before sunset on Tuesday through until just before sunrise Wednesday morning. Check your local forecast via our website or app to see if your sky conditions are right for viewing.
Snow Moon?
According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, the February Full Moon is most commonly called the Snow Moon. Other names include Bear Moon, Eagle Moon, Raccoon Moon, Groundhog Moon, and Hunger Moon.
"February is typically a time of heavy snowfall," the Almanac says.
This graphic collects all 12 Full Moon of 2025, including their popular names, whether they are a 'super' or 'micro' Moon, a perigee or apogee Full Moon, and whether they are remarkable in some other way (Lunar Eclipse or Harvest Moon). Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Scott Sutherland
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Most of these names are simplifications or loose translations taken from the lunar calendars of the First Nations people who live in what is now the northeastern United States.
Some indigenous people name the February Moon after animals, such as the goose (the Haida and the Omaha), the rabbit (the Potawatomi), the crow (the Shawnee), the coyote (the Shoshone), or the black bear (the Tlingit).
There are also references to cold (the Lakota and Wishram), frost (the Algonquin and Arapaho), and sleet (the Comanche).
The Kalapuya of the Pacific Northwest refer to it as "atchiulartadsh" which translates to "out of food" and could be a possible reference for 'Hunger Moon'.
It should be noted that these names are not meant just for the Full Moon, itself. Instead, they are the names used for the roughly 29-day lunar month ('lunation') between this Full Moon and the next. Thus, for 2025, the Snow Moon is from February 12 through March 13.
Snow for the Snow Moon?
Does this Full Moon live up to the name Snow Moon?
Here's a map of Canada showing snow on the ground as of February 11, 2025.
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It appears as though the entire country is covered by at least half a centimetre of snow on the ground at this time. The only hints of bare ground are in the South Coast of British Columbia, south of Vancouver, and one small patch of southern Saskatchewan along the US border.
This is unlikely to change much, at least in the short term, as Western Canada is currently in a deep freeze due to an Arctic outflow.
Meanwhile, a major snowstorm has taken aim at southern Ontario, threatening to drop up to 30 cm of snow on some regions of the province from Wednesday to Thursday.
That same storm is also set to push across southern Quebec on Thursday, dumping similar amounts of snow along the way.
(Thumbnail courtesy James Kim, who captured this picture of the Full Moon from Lamont County, Alberta, on December 14, 2024, and uploaded it to the Weather Network's UGC Gallery.)