Snow Moon

February is, on average, the snowiest month across large parts of the United States, and the name follows straightforwardly from that. The bleaker alternative — Hunger Moon — records what deep snow meant in practice: hunting became difficult, stored food ran low, and late winter was the hardest stretch of the year to survive.

The Cherokee name for February is kagali, ᎧᎦᎵ, and the name itself is solid — it is in Durbin Feeling’s dictionary and in the Cherokee Nation’s own language materials. What it means is far less settled than the almanacs imply. The popular rendering is “Bone Moon” or “Bony Moon”, glossed as a month with nothing to eat but bone marrow soup. The Cherokee Nation and the Museum of the Cherokee People give “hungry moon”. It is elsewhere translated as the month when the stars and moon are fixed in the heavens, which has nothing to do with food at all. The hunger reading at least agrees with February’s other names; the marrow soup is the detail that travels furthest and is supported least.

The Ojibwe Makwa-giizis, Bear Moon, marks the time when bear cubs are born.

February is also the only month that can pass without a full moon at all. Because the synodic month is 29.53 days and February is 28 or 29 days long, a full moon falling on the 30th or 31st of January leaves February empty. This happens roughly every 19 years — most recently in 2018, and next in 2037.

Also known as

• Hunger Moon
• Storm Moon
• Bear Moon
• Bony Moon

The 1778 record

Travelling among the Dakota in 1766 and 1767, Captain Jonathan Carver wrote down all twelve month names in a single passage. Published in 1778, it predates the almanac list by roughly a century and a half and is the oldest independent check on these names.