“February is typically a time of heavy snowfall,” says The Old Farmer’s Almanac. Other names they include, which are mostly taken from Indigenous lunar calendars, are Bear Moon, Eagle Moon, Raccoon Moon, Groundhog Moon, and Hunger Moon.
This graphic collects all 13 Full Moon of 2026, 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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Some Indigenous peoples named 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, in Indigenous lunar calendars, these names are not for just the Full Moon. Instead, they actually refer to the period from one New Moon to the next. Following along from previous ‘lunations’, this Snow Moon began after the January 18 New Moon, and will end just before the February 17 New Moon.
Snow for the Snow Moon?
Given the weather across Canada, especially in the last week of January, the Snow Moon is definitely living up to its name this year.
IN PHOTOS: Toronto’s snowiest day on record, 40-50+ cm reported
Parts of southern Ontario, and especially in the Greater Toronto area, are still digging out from the historic snowstorm that impacted the region on January 25. The intense storm buried downtown Toronto in over 60 cm of snow. Meanwhile Pearson International Airport reported a record-setting single-day snowfall amount of 46 cm.
