A Fetch.

Another tidbit from the (excellent) Peter Hessler New Yorker piece (archived) I quoted yesterday in connection with “Ouray”: It had started snowing the previous day, and it was still coming down softly. Nordquist stopped at a series of platforms that tracked the snow’s height. He carried a device that measured the amount of water in the snow, and he also relied on reading the landscape. “You can look at a slope and see if it’s been wind-sculpted,” he told me. “I’m looking to see if it’s loading from a fetch into a start zone. A fetch is the back side of a hill. A fetch is usually where snow is coming from. A lot of times, you can see big plumes coming off a peak.” Of course I was struck by this use of “fetch,” and immediately turned to the OED, whose noun entry (from 1895) has a fair number of senses, but not this; the closest is 3.b. “More generally: the expanse of water over which the wind blows before it reaches the point of observation (on the water or at the water’s edge); the…