My thought on the general "loudness" of cold months was due to reduced noise blocking or absorbing greenery like tree leaves, grass, etc. Which is then altered by a significant snowfall leading to sounds being softened again.
No one here has mentioned temperature inversion [0] which is responsible for a lot of the cold-induced amplification perceived in urban areas. It's quite a fascinating effect.
Cold air is also more dense, less momentous, and can transfer sound energy more efficiently between particles than hot air where the particles are spread out and have their own momentum to maintain rather than the sound's.
Shouldn't that be an inverse relationship though? Without leaves on the trees you should get less reflection, consequently more of the noise should radiate upwards. Unless you're standing at the other side of a bush/greenery. In that case it definitely absorbs a lot
Lots of small unaligned surfaces, like leaves, scatter the sound and make it interfere with itself. Reflection only makes the sound louder if you have large smooth flatish surfaces.
Assuming your comment is serious (rather than some quip), I think what we're seeing is differing visions for HN.
One group (me included) enjoys some levity, as long as it's high quality and doesn't get in the way of substantial discussions.
Another group would prefer that HN avoids that entirely.
It mostly seems like a matter of taste / preference, so I'm not sure how we can come to one kind on this, shy of seeing the pro-humour approach clearly hurting the site.
