Nature News Reporting: Snowflakes!

Leave a comment

December 16, 2013 by Sweetribz-->Briana :3

Snowflakes come in many unique sizes and shapes.  They start out as tiny ice crystals, which then draw in water droplets from the environment around them. 

For snowflakes to form, a few molecules in a water droplet must group together to from an ice lattice.  This becomes the nucleus and the droplet freezes around it.  This way of a snowflake forming can only occur in temperature 31 degrees F or lower.  In warmer clouds, a cooler particle must come in contact with the droplet to become a nucleus.

Once the droplet has frozen, it rapidly grows in its environment.  The ice crystal uses deposition to gather the water vapor onto its surface and freeze it. Since there are more water droplets in the environment than ice crystals, the snowflake will use deposition to grow to hundreds of millimeters in size. This process is known as the Wegener–Bergeron–Findeisen process.  Because the snow crystal takes water vapor from the environment, water droplets evaporate from around it.  Snowflakes will become so large as they are falling through the atmosphere, that they may collide and stick to other flakes, forming clusters.  These clusters are usually what are seen falling to the ground.  The world’s largest cluster snowflakes were recorded at 15 inches wide. 

The temperature and humidity around the flake are what determine its shape. The most common shape of snowflakes are triangular, but they can also form with a hexagonal shape.  Snowflakes can form so differently, because of the high number of water molecules and the difference in each ice crystal’s environment, that it is highly unlikely that any two could be alike.

Thanks for reading!

_{Resources: Snowflakes}