The art of snowflakes

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – As November’s chill sets in, you start hearing about the possibility of…snow.

Those icy flakes that can make a school-age kid’s day.

And the basis for an adult’s driving nightmare.

But it’s not just any chill that allows snow to form. It takes supercooled air to create a wintertime work of art by Mother Nature..

That ultra-cold air helps water to freeze around dust particles…which forms ice crystals.

And since water molecules are hexagon-shaped, they freeze into hexagon-shaped crystals.

As more ice crystals stick together, they form larger hexagon shapes.

After ice crystals are formed, more individual water molecules freeze on the points of the crystals, forming little arm-like projections called dendrites.

The temperature of the air impacts the shape of the snowflakes…warmer air (freezing to just below zero degrees fahrenheit-usually yields snowflakes that are more needle-like or the traditional snowflakes with branches.

If the air is well below zero, say, colder than eight degrees below zero, the snowflakes are more likely to be shaped as a flattened plate or a more icy column.

And here’s the interesting part…other than the largest, fluffiest snowflakes, the visual features of a snowflake are so small, you wouldn’t be able to see the most intricate details that set the different types of snowflakes apart.