For three days we waited,
a bowl of dull quartz for sky.
At night the valley dreamed of snow,
lost Christmas angels with dark-white wings
flailing the hills.
I dreamed a poem, perfect
as the first five-pointed flake,
that melted at dawn:
a Janus-time
to peer back at guttering dark days,
trajectories of the spent year.
And then snow fell.
Within an hour, a world immaculate
as January's new-hung page.
We breathe the radiant air like men new-born.
Ah, finally. As the speaker broods on the past (which is associated with darkness and death, ‘guttering dark’, ‘spent’), the falling of snow changes the mood from finality to possibility. 
 
 
 James Joyce  probably still holds bragging rights for  ‘most profound use of snow in literature’ , though.
New Year Snow