the.com/snowpack

means The compacted layers of snow that accumulate over a season in mountains or polar regions, storing water that slowly melts out later.

from A straightforward compound of 'snow' and 'pack' — the sense of 'pack' meaning a dense mass pressed together, the same sense you get in 'ice pack.' The word is a plain, functional 19th/20th-century coinage from hydrology and mountaineering, built to describe exactly what it is: snow packed down into layers by its own weight and repeated freeze-thaw cycles, with no hidden backstory beyond that literal compression.