If you have a deck that is snow covered with a very light, fluffy snow, and no one touches it, but in the next few days, from the sun, or whatever, the snow becomes “heavier” to move, does it actually weigh more? — PP
As the snow settles and becomes denser, it may feel “heavier”, but its total weight doesn’t change much. The same water molecules are simply packing themselves into a smaller space. So while each shovel-full of the dense stuff really does weigh more than a shovel-full of the light stuff, the total number of water molecules present on your deck and their associated weight is still the same.
In actually, some of the water molecules have almost certainly left via a form of solid-to-gas evaporation known technically as “sublimation.” You have seen this conversion of ice into gas when you have noticed that old ice cubes in your freezer are smaller than they used to be or when you see that the snow outside during a cold spell seems to vanish gradually without ever melting. Sublimation is also the cause of “freezer burn” for frozen foods left without proper wrapping.