“The first fall of snow is not only an event—it is a magical event,” the late English novelist J.B. Priestley wrote in an essay for his 1928 book, Apes and Angels. “You go to bed in one kind of a world, and wake up in another quite different.” Part of the wonder he referenced might stem from the palpable sense of serenity that the tiny flakes create as they blanket the ground. That calm isn’t a figment of the imagination: Particularly when it’s freshly fallen, light, and fluffy, snow is surprisingly effective at absorbing sound.