I lost my iPhone in the snow. I think?

This might be a stupid question, but I've heard a lot of different answers to this and wonder if anyone might be able to give me a straight one.
I lost my phone on Saturday (iPhone 4s) somewhere between leaving my work and walking across the street to my car. I'm almost positive I had my phone in the side pocket of my purse, but after I brushed the snow off of my car I reached into my purse for it and it was nowhere to be found. I retraced my steps literally 5 times over and hunted in the snow around my car 4 separate times, searched my car and emptied out my purse and it's still missing. I also checked my work, and it wasn't there, so I assumed I dropped it in the snow. I lost it somewhere around 6PM on Saturday and it's now 12:04 PM on Monday. When I call my phone, it still rings and doesn't go straight to voicemail (like it would if it were dead). This sort of leads me to think maybe it isn't in the snow -- wouldn't it be water damaged by now/dead/shut down from water damage? Has anyone had an experience with their iPhone and snow? So basically, my main question is, after 24 hours if it still is ringing when I call it, what do you think the chances are of it actually being in the snow? I have hope it might still be alive hidden somewhere without any sort of water damage, not in the snow. If anyone could help me out that would be great.

*Also, I stupidly didn't install the find my iphone app and I'm really kicking myself for it now. I only got this phone about a month ago and never thought to do it.

I hope you find it.

You don't need to install the app, just go to icloud.com and click in find my iphone and make a sound or use another iDevice, download the app and walk around making the sound. If it says its offline, than it disconnected from the Internet.