Wild About Nature Blog

Snowflakes

Spring is approaching, and that means the end of snow. This year we had some amazing snows in Wisconsin, not because we had a whole lot, but because of the snowflakes.

Sometimes it seems like there are only a few times a year when you can walk out into the winter world and discover millions of perfectly-shaped snowflakes. Usually snow is coming down in chunky conglomerates or pelting down as little pieces of ice. But this year we had lots of lovely flakes. Here’s a picture of my favorite one all year -

snowflake1

It was BIG – maybe the biggest one I’ve ever seen. About a centimeter across. What we usually call a snowflake is actually a snow crystal – the word ’snowflake’ can refer to a single snow crystal, but it also refers to the lumps that clump together as they fall from the sky. Single snow crystals usually max out at about the size of the one I saw, but Dr. Libbrecht, who wrote the book Ken Libbrecht’s Field Guide to Snowflakes (Voyageur Press, 2006) reported during one field study that he saw crystals as large as dimes. How amazing it would be to see snow crystals that large floating down from above!

Is every snow crystal really unique? It depends on how closely you look. If you’re using a microscope, every snow crystal will indeed be different. But there are some basic patterns that most crystals hold to, and to our naked eyes, you can sometimes find two that seem identical.

Here are some great photos of snowflakes, just so you can see the tremendous beauty of these little wonders.

The first set of pictures is by Wilson Bentley, who took remarkable snow crystal photos early in the last century. If you check out the other gallery pictures, you’ll find a lot more amazing shots, many of which look totally unlike our usual idea of snow.

All those crystals are melting now, flooding the swollen streams and replenishing the ground with moisture. Some of that same water will then evaporate and be taken right up into the sky again, where it will someday become a snow crystal once more and drift down on its lazy journey through the sky.