For some of us, the winter months are an uninvited guest in the form of endless snow. I will tell you interesting facts about fluffy snow that each of us should know.
Snowflakes are minerals
As water droplets freeze, the surrounding water vapor condenses on their surface. Because of the V-shaped angle between the oxygen and the two hydrogen atoms in each water molecule, the molecules attach to each other in a hexagonal pattern. Therefore, snowflakes first form as hexagonal prismatic crystals that are about the size of a dot in a sentence.
Prismatic crystals can be slender columns like wooden pencils, flat like six-sided plates of glass, or anything in between. As more water vapor is attached to them, the columns expand or become acicular, while the plates develop six branches that branch off themselves, eventually forming the familiar fern-like shape of the snowflakes. A typical snowflake contains 180 billion water molecules.
The structure of each snowflake depends on the water available and the temperature with which it interacts. Even snowflakes next to each other form into different shapes. That is why, in fact, there are no two identical snowflakes.
Statistically, this famous fact sounds dubious. Every winter, an average of one septillion (that's 1 followed by 24 zeros) snowflakes falls from the sky. If we take into account all the winters in the past, it is quite logical to assume that two snowflakes must have been identical. However, the complexity of snowflakes is so great that their variety is almost endless. And if we consider them atomically, their complexity will grow even more. Approximately 1 in 3,000 hydrogen atoms has a neutron in its nucleus, making it heavy hydrogen. These changes in hydrogen are distributed differently in each snowflake and reduce the chances of two identical snowflakes forming to almost zero.
Despite their differences, snowflakes are the same in that their molecules adopt an ordered crystal lattice structure. And because they are hard, natural, and inorganic, snow is put into an unexpected classification: minerals. That's right, snow is in the same class as diamonds, sapphires and rubies. If you don't mind keeping your hand in the freezer, then it could probably be encrusted in a ring.
Snowflakes begin their lives as grains of sand.
Moisture is certainly a necessary ingredient in snow. However, water is everywhere in the atmosphere in the form of vapor and small droplets, and only part of this moisture becomes snow. The catalyst for this process is the condensation nucleus. These cores can be anything from certain air pollution to ash from forest fires or volcanic eruptions, or radioactive particles from nuclear explosions. They can also be sea salt, meteoritic dust from space, dust from Earth, or pollen.
When the atmosphere is too hot or dry, dust and water remain separated. The dust creates atmospheric fog, which can sometimes be seen hanging over large cities during the summer. Water droplets do not freeze instantly when the air temperature drops to 0 degrees Celsius and can remain in a supercooled state down to -40 degrees Celsius. However, when the droplets come into contact with the hard surface of the dust particles, they freeze at much higher temperatures, in some cases at temperatures as high as -6 degrees Celsius. Since each dust particle is different from the others, the droplets freeze at different temperatures.
Groats: falling snowballs


Snowflakes are quite small and when the atmosphere is cold and dry, they stay that way. Dry snow is very annoying for those who like to play snowballs, because there is not enough moisture in it for the snow to stick together into snowballs.
But when the troposphere is wholly or partially warm, the snowflakes thaw slightly, resulting in a wet film on their outer side. When another snowflake hits it, they stick together to form a larger snowflake. Then the snowflake grows bigger and bigger, colliding with other snowflakes. If only a gentle wind is present, these snowflakes stay together on their way to land, reaching the size of a silver dollar or more. The largest snowflake in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records, fell on a ranch in Fort Keogh, Montana in January 1887. The rancher measured it and saw that it was 38 centimeters in diameter, about the size of a frisbee plate.
Snowflakes can also form graupel, a separate type of precipitation. Don't be surprised if you've never heard of them, because it's often mistaken for hail or sleet. Hail is usually associated with thunderstorms, not blizzards. In addition, its formation requires updrafts of wind blowing at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour or more. A drop of precipitation freezes and an updraft of air sends it up, where it collides with more water, which forms another layer on it. Thus, the hail grows in size until it becomes too heavy to be carried upward by the air current. It can become as big as a golf ball. If you cut it open, you can see the rings indicating the layers of ice. Another name for sleet is ice pellets, rain that freezes just before it hits the ground.
Groats, on the other hand, start life as a snowflake. As the snowflake falls, it passes through a cloud of supercooled droplets approximately 10 millimeters in diameter. The drop sticks to the snowflake and freezes. The image above is a real dendritic snowflake. A large knobby ball is attached to its center. These grains tend to remain small and much softer than the icy surface of the hail. They are tiny snowballs that are only suitable for snowball fights between Jonathan Swift's Lilliputians.
Snow is not always white


Snow appears white because the complex structure of snowflakes gives it multiple surfaces to reflect light across the entire color spectrum. What little sunlight a snowflake absorbs also spreads evenly. Because the spectrum of visible light is white, snow appears white to us. In fact, this is why we see most white matter as white. This is due to the unusual way they scatter light. Without their complex structure, snowflakes are liquid water or pure ice that is transparent, not white.
Snowflakes don't have to be white either. Blue snow is an alternative result of scattering and absorption of light. Blues are more difficult to absorb than other colors and if we look at the snow from afar we can see the blues among the whites.
Photosynthetic algae can also turn snow red, orange, purple, brown, or green. The most common color is red or pink and is commonly referred to as "watermelon snow" due to its color and sweet taste (although it is not recommended to be eaten). Snow is known to fall in different colors, usually due to air pollution. In 2007, orange, foul-smelling and oily snow fell in Siberia.
Deadly Snow
Approximately 105 snowstorms occur in the United States each year and 39 million tons of snow can fall during each storm. That's the equivalent of 11,000 Empire State Buildings of snow falling on American heads every year. Is it any wonder that snowstorms can cause infrastructure to stop functioning in entire cities?
A 2010 study found that local economies could suffer $300 million to $700 million in damage from one day of infrastructure downtime. And that's not counting lost tax revenues. It also does not reflect the cost of snow clearing. The state of Missouri spent $1.2 million to put salt on its roads during one February blizzard in 2011.
In addition, there is a payoff in the form of lives. Since 1936, snowstorms have resulted in 200 deaths annually. Approximately 70 percent of these deaths are due to car accidents. Another 25 percent are the result of overexertion from shoveling snow or pushing cars. The other 5 percent is due to roof collapses, house fires, carbon monoxide poisoning from stranded cars, or electric shock from downed power lines.
And that's not even counting snowstorms, which depend not on snowfall, but on a constant (three hours or more) wind blowing at a speed of at least 56 kilometers per hour. Blizzards are not as common or as deadly as other extreme weather events such as hurricanes or tornadoes, but not all hurricanes or tornadoes are fatal. Unlike almost every blizzard that results in loss of life.
In February 1972, Iran suffered a blizzard that lasted a week. During this time, several villages were covered with an 8-meter layer of snow, because of which all the inhabitants died. The number of deaths reached 4,000. For comparison, the deadliest tornado in history, which occurred in Bangladesh in 1989, claimed the lives of 1,300 people.
giant snowman


Most of us can't make real snow sculptures. The best we get is three large balls stacked on top of each other with a carrot for a nose and coals for eyes. Stepping back to admire our creation, we often think about who could do it better. And here is the answer to your question.
The world's largest snowman was "Olympia" (Olympia), a height of 37.2 meters according to the Guinness Book of Records. She was named after an elderly Maine senator at the time (Olympia Snowe and the people of Bethel spent a month sculpting a snowman in 2008. Her eyelashes were made from skis and her eyes were made from giant wreaths, her lips were made from old tires painted red.The snow woman's arms were two 8.2-meter pine trees.To give her style, a 30.5-meter scarf was thrown over her, car tires were fastened in the form of buttons, and a 2-meter pendant was hung around her neck.
While she may well not want to admit it, she weighs 6 million kilograms.
artificial snow


People have been attaching wooden planks to their feet and skiing down mountains for the past 4,000 years, but it wasn't until the 1800s that skiing was recognized as a recreational and sporting event. Another 50 years passed before the first snow-making machine was patented. In March 1949 Wayne Pierce, Art Hunt and Dave Richey attached a soda hose to a spray paint compressor. They demonstrated how water pushed through a spout is sprayed onto the mist, allowing it to solidify even at higher temperatures.
In 1961, Alden Hanson patented a snow machine that used a fan to shoot snowflakes over long distances. In 1975, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin discovered an even better nucleating agent: a biodegradable protein that helps water form ice crystals. In other words: dirt. As with sand and natural snow, it acted as a catalyst for freezing water in warm weather. Today, snow machines ("guns") make snow in much the same way as Mother Nature does.
When the 2014 Winter Olympics were held in the beach resort of Sochi, Russia, the organizers had 500 snow machines ready to make sure there was enough snow. The average February temperature in Sochi is 4.4 degrees Celsius. So, just in case, the Olympic Committee stocked up on 710,000 cubic meters of snow taken from the Caucasus Mountains last winter.
In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Chinese scientists claimed they had caused the first artificial snowfall over the Tibetan Plateau. In 2007, they fired cigarette-sized sticks of silver iodide into the clouds, causing 1 centimeter of snow to fall. The molecular lattice of silver-plated iodine is similar to water and bonds with it, acting like sand on natural snow and freezing the water. China used it again in 2009, hoping to ease the drought around Beijing. It is not clear whether cloud seeding works, mainly because it is difficult to prove whether snow was going to come from the impending cloud anyway.
Of course, sometimes people really need it to snow indoors. This requires artificial snow. One of the easiest ways to create it is to add cold water to sodium polyacrylate. This results in the formation of crystals that look and feel like real snow. Well, where can you find sodium polyacrylate? In disposable diapers. You read that right: every time a baby pees in a diaper, it also makes warm, yellow snow.
It also snows on two planets that are our neighbors in the solar system.


Mars experiences wild fluctuations in temperature. If you were standing at the Martian equator, you could slip out of your boots, but you would still need a hat. The reason is that the temperature at your feet will be 21 degrees Celsius, and at chest level 0 degrees Celsius. That's why you would be able to see the snow on your shoulders disappear before it hits your fingers. In 2008, Mars Lander observed Martian snowfall, which evaporated before the snow hit the ground.
However, Martian snow actually reaches the surface, especially around the poles. The photo above shows the North Pole of Mars. This snow is not water. It's frozen carbon dioxide. The crystals are microscopic, probably the size of red blood cells. They fall out like mist. Dry and powdery particles don't snowball, but that would be a skier's dream. In rare cases, water-ice still falls on Mars.
Snow also falls on Venus and is much stranger than Martian snow. It is not made up of water or carbon dioxide. Venusian snow is made of metal.
Venus's lowlands are dotted with pyrite minerals. Along with the strongest atmospheric pressure and temperatures up to 480 degrees Celsius, the minerals evaporate, rise into the atmosphere, which consists of carbon dioxide. At higher and colder altitudes atop the great Venusian mountains, a metallic mist envelops the slopes in bismuth sulfide and lead sulfide, better known as bismuthine and galena.
Science does not know if real snow falls on Venus, but rain has been seen on its surface. Again, rain on Venus is very different from rain on Earth. It is made up of sulfuric acid.
The biggest snowball fights in the world
At the moment, the largest snowball fight in the world is held by residents of Seattle. Anyone who has lived in the Emerald City knows that in this city it rains much more often than it snows. So when Seattle wanted to sponsor a fundraiser that ended in a legendary snowball fight, they had to bring 34 truckloads (or 74,000 kilograms) of snow from the Cascade Mountains to downtown Seattle, right next to the Space Needle.
Six thousand tickets for the fight were sold online and each ticket holder received a bracelet. On the designated Snow Day, January 12, 2013, 5,834 ticket holders scanned their wristbands before entering the arena. The arena was roughly divided in half with several snow forts dotted around the perimeter. Some participants brought equipment for making snowballs.
The previous record was held by 5387 South Koreans throwing more snowballs into the air than each other. It couldn't happen in Seattle. At 5:30 p.m., 130 judges from the Guinness Book of Records surrounded the area and gave the signal to fight. They disqualified those who did not throw a snowball within the next 90 seconds. The video shows huge curtains of flying snowballs. Some participants received scars. At the end of the allotted time, Seattle set a new record. By the end of the day, $50,000 had been raised for the Boys and Girls Club.
The unofficial record for the biggest snowball fight belongs to long-dead men. During the civil war, the two Confederate blocs attacked each other with nothing more than snowballs. Two blizzards on February 19 and 21, 1863, brought 43 centimeters of snow to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where General Thomas' 2nd Corps was camped for the winter.
General Robert Hoke's brigade had a friendly rivalry with Colonel William Stiles' 16th Regiment. On the morning of February 25, five North Carolina Hawk regiments attacked Stiles' camp. The residents of the state of Georgia, of whom Stiles' regiment mainly consisted, fought off the attack and moved on Hawke's camp. Robert Hawk's soldiers were waiting with their bags filled with snowballs. The close combat that followed was about 10,000 participants.
The coolest annual snow festival
If you love snow, then there is a place on Earth where you should go. It is so amazing that it can outshine winter. Every January, nearly 30 million visitors travel to Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province in northeast China, to attend the International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. The average temperature in Harbin is -17 degrees Celsius, and the recorded temperature is -35 degrees Celsius. Thanks to this, there are all conditions for sculptors on snow and ice to create their own patterns.
The festival began in 1963 as an ice lamp garden party. It was delayed for decades due to the Cultural Revolution in China, but was revived as an annual event in 1985. The festival is entirely paid for by the Chinese government and lasts for about a month, ending with a day dedicated to destroying the sculptures with ice picks.
Ice lanterns are hollowed-out sculptures with a candle inside that are still part of the celebrations, but the crowd wants to see life-sized ice buildings and structures. In December 2007, 600 sculptors took part in the construction of the world's largest snow sculpture to open the 2008 festival. The sculpture called "Romantic Feelings" reached a height of 35 meters, and its length was 200 meters. It included an ice girl, a cathedral and a Russian-style temple.

graceful beauty snowflakes

In normal snowfall we do not think that an ordinary snowflake, when studied under a microscope, can be a wonderful sight and amaze us with the correctness and complexity of forms. snowfall consists of such beauty.

By the way, the snow itself is not only white. In arctic and mountainous regions, pink or even red snow is common. The fact is that the algae living between its crystals color entire areas of snow. But there are cases when snow fell from the sky already colored - in blue, green, gray and black.

Yes, for Christmas 1969 in Sweden fell black Snow. Most likely, this happened due to the fact that during the fall, the snow absorbed soot and industrial pollution from the atmosphere. In any case, laboratory testing of air samples revealed the presence of the insecticide DDT in the black snow.

Mathematics was especially struck by the “tiny white dot” he found in the middle of the snowflake, as if it were the trace of the leg of a compass, which was used to outline its circumference.

The great astronomer Johannes Kepler in his treatise "New Year's gift. About hexagonal snowflakes" explained the shape of crystals the will of God. The Japanese scientist Nakaya Ukichiro called snow "a letter from heaven, written in secret hieroglyphs."

He was the first to create a classification of snowflakes. The only one in the world named after Nakaya snowflake museum located on the island of Hokkaido.

Complex star snowflakes have a unique, eye-catching geometric shape. And there are more variants of such forms, according to physicist John Nelson from Ritsumeikan University (Japanese) in Kyoto, than there are atoms in the observable Universe.

During the snowfall in 1987 in Fort Coe (Montana, USA) a snowflake was found - a world record holder with a diameter of 38 cm.

The fact that one snowflake is practically weightless, any of us knows very well: just put your palm under the falling snow.

An ordinary snowflake weighs about a milligram(very rarely 2-3 milligrams), although there are exceptions - the largest snowflakes fell on April 30, 1944 in Moscow. Caught in the palm, they covered it almost entirely and resembled ostrich feathers.

More than half of the world's population has never didn't see snow except in photographs.

A layer of one centimeter of snow packed over the winter gives 25-35 cubic meters of water per 1 ha

Snowflakes are made up of 95% from air, which causes a low density and a relatively slow fall velocity (0.9 km/h).

Snow can be eaten. True, the energy consumption for eating snow is many times greater than its calorie content.

A snowflake is one of the most fantastic examples of the self-organization of matter from simple to complex.

In the Far North, the snow is so hard that the ax, when struck, rings like it was hit on iron.

The forms of snowflakes are unusually diverse - there are more than five thousand of their variations. Even a special international classification has been developed, in which snowflakes are combined into ten classes. These are stars, plates, columns, needles, hail, tree-like crystals resembling fern stalks. The dimensions of the winter miracle range from 0.1 to 7 millimeters.

The crunch of the snow- it's just the noise from the crushed crystals. Of course, the human ear cannot perceive the sound of one "broken" snowflake. But myriads of crushed crystals create quite a distinct creak. Snow creaks only in frost, and the tone of the creak changes depending on the air temperature - the stronger the frost, the higher the tone of the creak. The scientists made acoustic measurements and found that there are two gentle and not pronounced maxima in the spectrum of snow creaking - in the range of 250-400 Hz and 1000-1600 Hz.

Snowflakes viewed under a microscope are the miraculous handiwork of God. Each crystallized raindrop - and this is snow - has a certain systematic pattern with countless varieties - several of them are shown in the figure.

In the snow we don't think that an ordinary snowflake under a microscope is a beautiful sight and amazes with the correctness and complexity of the form. Snowflakes look like roses, lilies and wheels with six teeth. He was particularly struck by the “tiny white dot” he found in the middle of the snowflake, as if it were the trace of the leg of a compass, which was used to outline its circumference.

Snow is an air-water formation that falls as precipitation as a result of condensation and solidification processes in the upper atmosphere. Depending on the conditions for the passage of condensation, the size, shape and structure of snowflakes can vary. In general, snow falling during the winter at least a few times provides an important function of storing moisture for plants to return to growth with the advent of spring.


With the advent of technical possibilities for studying the structure of snowflakes, more than 10 different similar ones were identified within the group of their shapes. These include: lamellar, stellate and volumetric formations of a dendritic structure, needle-like, columnar and irregular shapes.

The white color of snow is due to the presence of air in their composition.

Since air plays a predominant role in the composition of snow, light, falling on the surface of ice crystals, is scattered in different directions. Light in them can propagate in all directions, regardless of the wavelength.

A large amount of snow can lead to flooding and provoke dangerous high-speed landslides in mountainous conditions.

The lightness of the composition of snow described above does not mean that it is harmless, especially in large quantities. For example, the snow cover of the surface of a hectare can produce about 30 m 3 of water when melting, which can threaten flooding of low relief areas. On the other hand, the impact of snow in mountainous conditions is deadly, where sometimes several snowflakes falling on the surface with an insufficient critical mass can provoke a snowfall. The danger of collapses is their high speed, which is in the range of 250-400 km / h.

Scientists spent 26 billion to study the formation of snowflakes

Not having sufficient means and methods to study the process of formation of snow crystals, scientists spent 26 400 000$ . As a result, they found out a rather simple fact, which is that from the vapor evaporated from the surface of the earth, skipping the rain phase, under conditions of condensation and low temperatures, snow crystals are formed.

Under the influence of snow, the Earth can be left without solar heat

Snow, able to perceive only 5-10% solar heat, the remaining 90-95% are reflected back. In the conditions of a nuclear winter, in the event of its occurrence, humanity risks losing not only heat, but also food and oxygen produced by plants in places where the surface is covered with snow.

There is a snowflake museum in Japan

The Japanese are distinguished by their reverent attitude to snow and snowflakes, believing that they are special on their islands, different from everyone else in the world. The prerequisite for the founding of the Hokkaido Snowflake Museum was the publication in 1954 of a book on the types of snowflakes by Ukihiro Nahaya.

Creaking snow appears only in frosty weather

Indeed, the creak of snow, which is a crunchy sound, is formed when exposed to many small needles of crystals and occurs exclusively in the temperature range below -3 ° C. At temperatures below the indicated temperature by 3 degrees, the noise produced has a high-frequency characteristic.

The crystal diameter is extremely small

Most snowflakes in their diameter fluctuate with a certain range around the value of 5 mm, however, in 1987, crystals with a diameter of 38 mm were recorded in the US state of Montana.

In history, snow falls in various colors, from black to pink.

On Christmas Eve 1963, black snow fell on the territory of one piece of land. Scientists attributed this fact to the high pollution of the atmosphere of this territory, as a result of which, the snow, when passing to the ground, absorbed soot.

Snow is edible

It is possible to use snow for food, but for its use it is necessary several times more than with other products. It should also be noted that the amount of energy spent on its consumption is many times higher than the calorie content of the product.

• There is a Snow Festival. Indeed, such a day exists, because in addition to the aesthetic function, snow often plays an important role in agriculture. International Snow Day is celebrated January 19.
• During the winter, a huge amount of snow falls. Every year, in accordance with the average indicators, about a septillion snowflakes fall on the Earth in the form of precipitation. A septillion denotes a number containing 24 zeros after the one.
• The weight of a snowflake is very small. The mass of an ordinary snowflake averages 1 mg, however, for larger irregularly shaped samples that have taken in ice particles as they move towards the ground, it can be 2-3 mg.
• The main component of snowflakes is air, which causes their low speed. Typically, they are 90-95% air, and since air has a low density value, this causes their low speed towards the ground. On average, it is about 0.9-1 km / h.
• A cubic meter of snow contains millions of snowflakes. A volume of 1m 3 of snow can contain up to three and a half hundred million snowflakes, each of which has a unique structure.
• There are people who have never seen snow in their lives. In fact, the number of such people is large and makes up about half of the world's population.
• There are methods of artificial snow production. After studying the mechanism of the formation of snowflakes, the idea of ​​​​creating snow in the laboratory became possible and realized.
• Snow also exists on other planets and moons. Research has confirmed that snow falls on Mars in the form of carbon dioxide, while on Titan it consists of methane.

For some of us, the winter months are an uninvited guest in the form of endless snow. In order to brighten up winter sadness for you, we will tell you interesting facts about fluffy snow that each of us should know:

10. Snowflakes start life as grains of sand.

Moisture is certainly a necessary ingredient in snow. However, water is everywhere in the atmosphere in the form of vapor and small droplets, and only part of this moisture becomes snow. The catalyst for this process is the condensation nucleus. These cores can be anything from certain air pollution to ash from forest fires or volcanic eruptions, or radioactive particles from nuclear explosions. They can also be sea salt, meteoritic dust from space, dust from Earth, or pollen.

When the atmosphere is too hot or dry, dust and water remain separated. The dust creates atmospheric fog, which can sometimes be seen hanging over large cities during the summer. Water droplets do not freeze instantly when the air temperature drops to 0 degrees Celsius and can remain in a supercooled state down to -40 degrees Celsius. However, when the droplets come into contact with the hard surface of the dust particles, they freeze at much higher temperatures, in some cases at temperatures as high as -6 degrees Celsius. Since each dust particle is different from the others, the droplets freeze at different temperatures.

9 Snowflakes Are Minerals

As water droplets freeze, the surrounding water vapor condenses on their surface. Because of the V-shaped angle between the oxygen and the two hydrogen atoms in each water molecule, the molecules attach to each other in a hexagonal pattern. Therefore, snowflakes first form as hexagonal prismatic crystals that are about the size of a dot in a sentence.

Prismatic crystals can be slender columns like wooden pencils, flat like six-sided plates of glass, or anything in between. As more water vapor is attached to them, the columns expand or become acicular, while the plates develop six branches that branch off themselves, eventually forming the familiar fern-like shape of the snowflakes. A typical snowflake contains 180 billion water molecules.

The structure of each snowflake depends on the water available and the temperature with which it interacts. Even snowflakes next to each other form into different shapes. That is why, in fact, there are no two identical snowflakes.

Statistically, this famous fact sounds dubious. Every winter, an average of one septillion (that's 1 followed by 24 zeros) snowflakes falls from the sky. If we take into account all the winters in the past, it is quite logical to assume that two snowflakes must have been identical. However, the complexity of snowflakes is so great that their variety is almost endless. And if we consider them atomically, their complexity will grow even more. Approximately 1 in 3,000 hydrogen atoms has a neutron in its nucleus, making it heavy hydrogen. These changes in hydrogen are distributed differently in each snowflake and reduce the chances of two identical snowflakes forming to almost zero.

Despite their differences, snowflakes are the same in that their molecules adopt an ordered crystal lattice structure. And because they are hard, natural, and inorganic, snow is put into an unexpected classification: minerals. That's right, snow is in the same class as diamonds, sapphires and rubies. If you don't mind keeping your hand in the freezer, then it could probably be encrusted in a ring.

8. Groats: Falling snowballs


Snowflakes are quite small and when the atmosphere is cold and dry, they stay that way. Dry snow is very annoying for those who like to play snowballs, because there is not enough moisture in it for the snow to stick together into snowballs.

But when the troposphere is wholly or partially warm, the snowflakes thaw slightly, resulting in a wet film on their outer side. When another snowflake hits it, they stick together to form a larger snowflake. Then the snowflake grows bigger and bigger, colliding with other snowflakes. If only a gentle wind is present, these snowflakes stay together on their way to land, reaching the size of a silver dollar or more. The largest snowflake in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records, fell on a ranch in Fort Keogh, Montana in January 1887. The rancher measured it and saw that it was 38 centimeters in diameter, about the size of a frisbee plate.

Snowflakes can also form graupel, a separate type of precipitation. Don't be surprised if you've never heard of them, because it's often mistaken for hail or sleet. Hail is usually associated with thunderstorms, not blizzards. In addition, its formation requires updrafts of wind blowing at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour or more. A drop of precipitation freezes and an updraft of air sends it up, where it collides with more water, which forms another layer on it. Thus, the hail grows in size until it becomes too heavy to be carried upward by the air current. It can become as big as a golf ball. If you cut it open, you can see the rings indicating the layers of ice. Another name for sleet is ice pellets, rain that freezes just before it hits the ground.

Groats, on the other hand, start life as a snowflake. As the snowflake falls, it passes through a cloud of supercooled droplets approximately 10 millimeters in diameter. The drop sticks to the snowflake and freezes. The image above is a real dendritic snowflake. A large knobby ball is attached to its center. These grains tend to remain small and much softer than the icy surface of the hail. They are tiny snowballs that are only suitable for snowball fights between Jonathan Swift's Lilliputians.

7. Snow is not always white


Snow appears white because the complex structure of snowflakes gives it multiple surfaces to reflect light across the entire color spectrum. What little sunlight a snowflake absorbs also spreads evenly. Because the spectrum of visible light is white, snow appears white to us. In fact, this is why we see most white matter as white. This is due to the unusual way they scatter light. Without their complex structure, snowflakes are liquid water or pure ice that is transparent, not white.

Snowflakes don't have to be white either. Blue snow is an alternative result of scattering and absorption of light. Blues are more difficult to absorb than other colors and if we look at the snow from afar we can see the blues among the whites.

Photosynthetic algae can also turn snow red, orange, purple, brown, or green. The most common color is red or pink and is commonly referred to as "watermelon snow" due to its color and sweet taste (although it is not recommended to be eaten). Snow is known to fall in different colors, usually due to air pollution. In 2007, orange, foul-smelling and oily snow fell in Siberia.

6. Deadly snow

Approximately 105 snowstorms occur in the United States each year and 39 million tons of snow can fall during each storm. is equivalent to 11,000 Empire State Buildings of snow falling on American heads every year. Is it any wonder that snowstorms can cause infrastructure to stop functioning in entire cities?

A 2010 study found that local economies could suffer $300 million to $700 million in damage from one day of infrastructure downtime. And that's not counting lost tax revenues. It also does not reflect the cost of snow clearing. The state of Missouri spent $1.2 million to put salt on its roads during one February blizzard in 2011.

In addition, there is a payoff in the form of lives. Since 1936, snowstorms have resulted in 200 deaths annually. Approximately 70 percent of these deaths are due to car accidents. Another 25 percent are the result of overexertion from shoveling snow or pushing cars. The other 5 percent is due to roof collapses, house fires, carbon monoxide poisoning from stranded cars, or electric shock from downed power lines.

And that's not even counting snowstorms, which depend not on snowfall, but on a constant (three hours or more) wind blowing at a speed of at least 56 kilometers per hour. Blizzards are not as common or as deadly as other extreme weather events such as hurricanes or tornadoes, but not all hurricanes or tornadoes are fatal. Unlike almost every blizzard that results in loss of life.

In February 1972, Iran suffered a blizzard that lasted a week. During this time, several villages were covered with an 8-meter layer of snow, because of which all the inhabitants died. The number of deaths reached 4,000. For comparison, the deadliest tornado in history, which occurred in Bangladesh in 1989, claimed the lives of 1,300 people.

5 Giant Snowman


Most of us can't make real snow sculptures. The best we get is three large balls stacked on top of each other with a carrot for a nose and coals for eyes. Stepping back to admire our creation, we often think about who could do it better. And here is the answer to your question.

The world's largest snowman was "Olympia" (Olympia), a height of 37.2 meters according to the Guinness Book of Records. She was named after an elderly Maine senator of the time (Olympia Snowe) and the people of Bethel spent a month sculpting a snowman in 2008. Her eyelashes were made from skis and her eyes were made from giant wreaths, her lips were made from old tires painted red. The hands of the snowwoman were two 8.2-meter pine trees. To give her style, a 30.5 meter scarf was thrown over her, car tires were fastened in the form of buttons, and a 2 meter pendant was hung around her neck.

While she may well not want to admit it, she weighs 6 million kilograms.

4. Artificial snow


People have been attaching wooden planks to their feet and skiing down mountains for the past 4,000 years, but it wasn't until the 1800s that skiing was recognized as a recreational and sporting event. Another 50 years passed before the first snow-making machine was patented. In March 1949 Wayne Pierce, Art Hunt and Dave Richey attached a soda hose to a spray paint compressor. They demonstrated how water pushed through a spout is sprayed onto the mist, allowing it to solidify even at higher temperatures.

In 1961, Alden Hanson patented a snow machine that used a fan to shoot snowflakes over long distances. In 1975, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin discovered an even better nucleating agent: a biodegradable protein that helps water form ice crystals. In other words: dirt. As with sand and natural snow, it acted as a catalyst for freezing water in warm weather. Today, snow machines ("guns") make snow in much the same way as Mother Nature does.

When the 2014 Winter Olympics were held in the beach resort of Sochi, Russia, the organizers had 500 snow machines ready to make sure there was enough snow. The average February temperature in Sochi is 4.4 degrees Celsius. So, just in case, the Olympic Committee stocked up on 710,000 cubic meters of snow taken from the Caucasus Mountains last winter.

In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Chinese scientists claimed they had caused the first artificial snowfall over the Tibetan Plateau. In 2007, they fired cigarette-sized sticks of silver iodide into the clouds, causing 1 centimeter of snow to fall. The molecular lattice of silver-plated iodine is similar to water and bonds with it, acting like sand on natural snow and freezing the water. China used it again in 2009, hoping to ease the drought around Beijing. It is not clear whether cloud seeding works, mainly because it is difficult to prove whether snow was going to come from the impending cloud anyway.

Of course, sometimes people really need it to snow indoors. This requires artificial snow. One of the easiest ways to create it is to add cold water to sodium polyacrylate. This results in the formation of crystals that look and feel like real snow. Well, where can you find sodium polyacrylate? In disposable diapers. You read that right: every time a baby pees in a diaper, it also makes warm, yellow snow.

3. It also snows on two planets that are our neighbors in the solar system.


Mars experiences wild fluctuations in temperature. If you were standing at the Martian equator, you could slip out of your boots, but you would still need a hat. The reason is that the temperature at your feet will be 21 degrees Celsius, and at chest level 0 degrees Celsius. That's why you would be able to see the snow on your shoulders disappear before it hits your fingers. In 2008, Mars Lander observed Martian snowfall, which evaporated before the snow hit the ground.

However, Martian snow actually reaches the surface, especially around the poles. The photo above shows the North Pole of Mars. This snow is not water. It's frozen carbon dioxide. The crystals are microscopic, probably the size of red blood cells. They fall out like mist. Dry and powdery particles don't snowball, but that would be a skier's dream. In rare cases, water-ice still falls on Mars.

Snow also falls on Venus and is much stranger than Martian snow. It is not made up of water or carbon dioxide. Venusian snow is made of metal.

Venus's lowlands are dotted with pyrite minerals. Along with the strongest atmospheric pressure and temperatures up to 480 degrees Celsius, the minerals evaporate, rise into the atmosphere, which consists of carbon dioxide. At higher and colder altitudes atop the great Venusian mountains, a metallic mist envelops the slopes in bismuth sulfide and lead sulfide, better known as bismuthine and galena.

Science does not know if real snow falls on Venus, but rain has been seen on its surface. Again, rain on Venus is very different from rain on Earth. It is made up of sulfuric acid.

2. The biggest snowball fights in the world

At the moment, the largest snowball fight in the world is held by residents of Seattle. Anyone who has lived in the Emerald City knows that in this city it rains much more often than it snows. So when Seattle wanted to sponsor a fundraiser that ended in a legendary snowball fight, they had to bring 34 truckloads (or 74,000 kilograms) of snow from the Cascade Mountains to downtown Seattle, right next to the Space Needle.

Six thousand tickets for the fight were sold online and each ticket holder received a bracelet. On the designated Snow Day, January 12, 2013, 5,834 ticket holders scanned their wristbands before entering the arena. The arena was roughly divided in half with several snow forts dotted around the perimeter. Some participants brought equipment for making snowballs.

The previous record was held by 5387 South Koreans throwing more snowballs into the air than each other. It couldn't happen in Seattle. At 5:30 p.m., 130 judges from the Guinness Book of Records surrounded the area and gave the signal to fight. They disqualified those who did not throw a snowball within the next 90 seconds. The video shows huge curtains of flying snowballs. Some participants received scars. At the end of the allotted time, Seattle set a new record. By the end of the day, $50,000 had been raised for the Boys and Girls Club.

The unofficial record for the biggest snowball fight belongs to long-dead men. During the civil war, the two Confederate blocs attacked each other with nothing more than snowballs. Two blizzards on February 19 and 21, 1863, brought 43 centimeters of snow to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where General Thomas' 2nd Corps was camped for the winter.

General Robert Hoke's brigade had a friendly rivalry with Colonel William Stiles' 16th Regiment. On the morning of February 25, five North Carolina Hawk regiments attacked Stiles' camp. The residents of the state of Georgia, of whom Stiles' regiment mainly consisted, fought off the attack and moved on Hawke's camp. Robert Hawk's soldiers were waiting with their bags filled with snowballs. The close combat that followed was about 10,000 participants.

1. The coolest annual snow festival

If you are still feeling frustrated, then there is a place on Earth where you should go. It is so amazing that it can outshine winter. Every January, nearly 30 million visitors travel to Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province in northeast China, to attend the International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. The average temperature in Harbin is -17 degrees Celsius, and the recorded temperature is -35 degrees Celsius. Thanks to this, there are all conditions for sculptors on snow and ice to create their own patterns.

The festival began in 1963 as an ice lamp garden party. It was delayed for decades due to the Cultural Revolution in China, but was revived as an annual event in 1985. The festival is entirely paid for by the Chinese government and lasts for about a month, ending with a day dedicated to destroying the sculptures with ice picks.

Ice lanterns are hollowed-out sculptures with a candle inside that are still part of the celebrations, but the crowd wants to see life-sized ice buildings and structures. In December 2007, 600 sculptors took part in the construction of the world's largest snow sculpture to open the 2008 festival. The sculpture called "Romantic Feelings" reached a height of 35 meters, and its length was 200 meters. It included an ice girl, a cathedral and a Russian-style temple.