Generally not, but rarely if it dumps sufficient snow (isnt it like a 11 to 1 ratio of volume between snow and rain??) it potentially could or form enough on the ground over time to flood the fire. (fast drifting snow is another issue)

Generally shelter is first thing you look for, even out in the open when there is no convenient cave/overhang (that under the pine tree idea or rather up near the trunk as a windblock) Wind Chill will suck heat out of you faster than a fire will normally provide (then I will build a bigger fire .. and spend time in the wind chill getting the fuel for it ....). SO cold outside (40 below) a fire can only do so much for you.

10 inch of snow = 1 inches of rain. There is far less water in snow than there is in rain.

there's the formula i needed!

i was wondering why rain would put out a fire so much more easily - because there's so much more water!

from inquiries both online and offline, the general consensus is that only massive amounts of snow will put out a fire. the snow equivalent of a hard downpour.

while i do track snow accumulation, snow currently falls at a constant rate. so there is no "light dusting" vs "whiteout blizzard" thing going on. accumulations can be high, but the rate at which it accumulates is only about 1" per hour at most.

perhaps i'll give snow a low chance to put out a fire - or no chance at all. no or practically no chance sounds right.

as mentioned above, fires should and do perform other actions in the game: reduce animal encounters, protect from exposure to cold, cooking, etc. melting snow for cooking is on the list, but not implemented yet.

I'd hope the snow doesn't put out my fire especially if I need it to survive the night and keep from freezing to death.

If you have a fire intensity stat then snow and rain could reduce it by fixed amounts. Say 2 and 5 out of a range of 1 to 10 with a score below 1 indicating the fire has gone out. That way if they have a weak or dying fire then it goes out in snow but if they have roaring fire its just not as strong as it normally would be. This mechanic would also make it more difficult to get a fire going and keep it alive when its snowing or raining.

Open barbecue pits work great in the snow, in my experience, but the size of the fire would definitely be a factor. If you have different intensities of snowfall, you could have light, medium and heavy snow. Light snow does nothing to fires, medium snow can put out a small cooking fire, heavy snow will gradually extinguish a campfire, a larger fire will be immune to any snowfall.

The fires are assumed to be well maintained. There are actions for checking a fire as well as adding wood to a fire.

Accumulation is modeled, but precipitation rate is not (at least not yet). I was considering something based on how long it had been snowing as a crude model of snowfall rate, but decided it was probably too crude a model.

If you're tracking snow accumulation, are the fires being built on top of that snow (basically melting a hole into it) or in an area scraped clear by the cavemen? I could easily see the fires quenching themselves in melted snow if built on a large drift, with some sort of increased liklihood over time and also increasing the deeper the snow it's built on.

As mentioned above, accumulation rates are not yet modeled.

The player is assumed to clear an area of snow before attempting to make a fire, so no meltdown or runoff issues.

I am at a ski lodge. It is snowing. The outdoor fires are fine. There are even multiple kinds of fires to try it with, all of them are fine and in fact do not seem to care about the snow at all.

Thanks for the reality check!

it looks like 1 inch rain = 10 inches of snow is the reason.

i'm about 50 miles south of Washington DC, about 1500 yards from the mouth of the Potomac river where it empties into the Chesapeake bay. we sometimes get intense rainstorms here in the summer (1/2 inch per hour ?). that would be the equivalent of 5 inches of snow in one hour. and snow generally just doesn't fall that fast. perhaps 1 to 2 inches per hour at most (except maybe in the rockies, urals, alps, siberia, antartica, etc). i suspect the colder conditions required for snow tend to inhibit heavy precipitation rates. Any weather junkies out there to confirm this?