KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Have you ever looked closely at a snowflake falling and landing on the ground?
Each one is so beautiful, and when billions of them accumulate, a winter wonderland is experienced. Kids and adults enjoy this beauty, but of course there is also the danger as it becomes quite slick outside.
So how do snowflakes form? It is actually a rather complex process. First, it needs to be cold enough — 32 degrees or colder in the region where the precipitation is forming, around 5,000 to 10,000 feet up. If it is cold enough, then the water vapor in clouds will condense into ice crystals and not into raindrops.
Amazingly, there also must first be some dust, pollen or other minute, dirty particles in the air. Yes, if the air were completely clean, there would be no raindrops or snowflakes.
As clean as snow seems to be, there must be what is called "condensation nuclei "for a raindrop or snowflake to develop. As a storm system approaches, it will cause the air to rise, and this forced rising of the air will cause the water vapor to condense into snowflakes. As the air continues to rise, the ice crystals that form will bump into each other and grow into six-sided crystals.
Depending on how cold it is in the cloud, these ice crystals will form into different shapes as thin needles, columns or others.
There are actually 10 basic snowflake types, or shapes. There is a mystery here, and we still don’t know everything about how these form — but we do know they are quite pretty.
The larger snowflakes are actually a bunch of smaller ones that have joined together. This happens more often when the temperatures are near freezing. After the snowflakes form, they will begin falling to earth.
This winter, take a few minutes and really look closely at each one. The kids will love to see these formations, and they will also love to play in the snow.
