A method of synthesizing a snowfield from point field measurements, which is based on the fractal structure of the water equivalent, is presented. Two steps are involved in the synthesis. First, the method of fractal sum of pulses is used to generate the spatial distribution of the snow water equivalent in an array. Second, the synthetic snowfield is adjusted to take on the statistical properties of the natural snow cover. The two-parameter lognormal probability density function fitted to field data is used for this purpose. Examples of the application of the lognormal distribution for describing the water equivalent of snow covers on various landscapes encountered in a prairie environment are presented. The geometrical properties (fractal dimension(s)) of snow patches that result from melting a synthetic snow cover agree closely with those of patches of an ablated natural snow cover.¿ 1997 American Geophysical Union