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Quand il neige, nous skions.

Quand il neige, nous skions.
When it snows, we ski.
From Lesson 99:Closed duration (pendant)·French

Breakdown of Quand il neige, nous skions.

quand
when
skier
to ski
neiger
to snow

Questions & Answers about Quand il neige, nous skions.

Could I use pendant instead of quand here to say 'while it snows'?
No, because pendant means 'during' or 'for a set period' and is followed by a noun or a length of time (like pendant deux heures for 'for two hours'). To connect two full actions like 'it snows' and 'we ski', you need a conjunction like quand (when). If you wanted to specifically say 'while', you would have to use pendant que before the verb.
Why is it il neige and not something like ça neige?
In French, weather expressions almost always use the impersonal pronoun il (it). It does not refer to a person (he), but acts as a placeholder subject, exactly like 'it' does in English weather phrases. You will see this same pattern in il pleut (it rains) or il fait beau (the weather is nice).
Is skions spelled correctly? The ending looks unusual.
It is spelled correctly! The infinitive verb is skier (to ski). To conjugate it for nous (we) in the present tense, you drop the -er to get the stem ski-, and then add the standard nous ending -ons. Putting them together gives you skions. It looks a bit weird, but it follows the exact same regular rules as a verb like parler.

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