Over 26 different types of Ice...

But snowflakes are my favourite!

I love snow. Watching it fall, softly hushing on the ground. Getting big, fat fluffs of it in my face, stuck in my hat and melting wetly down neck! But my absolute favourite thing is seeing snowflakes gently whisking through the air, spiraling around and down to join the messy clusters on the ground.

Snowflake photos by Kenneth G. Libbrecht

I am not sure quite what it is that I find so wonderful about them. The symmetry perhaps, or the notion that every snowflake is unique. Maybe its that they just fall, quietly out of the sky, sparkling and perfectly beautiful.

I first saw snowflakes during a reindeer hunting expedition. It was cold, it was light, it was the middle of the night - and there were loads of these fantastic shapes sprinkled all over my jacket and backpack. And here was I thinking this kind of thing only happened in the movies!!

Snowflakes on my jacket (excellent jacket from EarthSeaSky)

Now, according to this handy snowflake guide (Snowflake Guide), the snowflakes on my jacket belong to the type known as 'Stellar Dendrites' and 'Fern-like Stellar Dendrites'. There are even places  where, just like you can go to watch birds, you can visit to watch and observe snowflakes. I spent a lot of time watching them during winter in Svalbard, just outside the UNIS building in Longyearbyen. The lights were up high, and lit up the snowflakes as they fell and there was no wind, just snowflakes falling all around.

Snowflakes are made up of ice, which forms when water vapour freezes. A frozen vapour-droplet then develops the shape of the snowflake but this seems to be a pretty complicated process, involving a lot of physics. At the most simplest, different shapes form depending on air temperature, and the amount of vapour and the shape of the original frozen droplet.

If any science were 'magical' it would be the physics and principles that guide the formation of snowflakes. Disney's 'Frozen' movie certainly calls it magic and sorcery, but perhaps Elsa is simply a physicist in another form.