VERY INTERESTING: SNOW

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Very interesting facts about snow

Whether you love frolicking in the white stuff at the first sign of a snowflake or prefer bundling up and hibernating until the spring thaw, or even if you’ve only ever dreamed of touching a snowball, here’s a blizzard of brrrilliant snow-driven facts…

Snow is not white

Mind blown. You can certainly dream of a white Christmas, even if it isn’t strictly accurate. As any good snow pedant will tell you, the ‘white stuff’ isn’t actually white, but rather translucent. It’s the light reflecting off it that makes it appear white with the many sides of the snowflake scattering light in many directions, diffusing the entire colour spectrum. Snow can also appear in a wide variety of spectacular hues. Dust, pollution or cold-loving (cryophilic) fresh-water algae can colour it black, orange or blue. Pink or ‘watermelon snow’, caused by algae containing astaxanthin, a chemical similar to the one found in carrots, was mentioned in the early writings of Aristotle.

Snowflakes of many designs

One of the determining factors in the shape of individual snowflakes is the air temperature around it. The study of flakes has identified that long, thin needle-like ice crystals form at around -2 C (28 F), while a lower temperature of -5 C (23 F) will lead to very flat plate-like crystals. Further changes in temperature as the snowflake falls determines different shapes of the six arms or dendritic structure of the crystal.

A catalogue of snowflakes

Creator of the Compound Interest science blog, Andy Brunning, has painstakingly catalogued 35 different types of snowflake (plus a few other types of frozen precipitation). They are designated as column, plane, rimed, germs, irregular plus a number of combinations of all of them.

Grown from a nucleus

Snowflakes or snow crystals don’t have nuclei in the traditional, biological way (that contains genetic information), but they all do form around one single particle whether that’s a speck of dust or a piece of pollen. This makes it completely different from sleet (which consists of frozen raindrops) or hail (which is sleet droplets that collect water as they fall). This original piece of material that formed the flake can be detected using a powerful microscope.

Snowflakes get big

For decades there have been stories of giant snowflakes falling all over the globe, measuring anywhere from two to six and even, on one occasion, 15 inches across. While many have doubted these reports and pointed out the lack of corroborating evidence, scientists now claim there’s nothing to stop flakes growing that big. As flake size isn’t part of the meteorological measuring designations for snow, these massive flakes may well be out there, but just unreported, unseen or broken up by wind currents as they descend.

Snow affects sound

Freshly fallen snow absorbs sound waves, giving everything a seemingly hushed, quieter ambience after a flurry. But if the snow then melts and refreezes, the ice can reflect sound waves making sound travel further and clearer.

And as always have a chilled day from the Viking