Snow! by Mass Media student Ariana S

    Most of the time when the temperature hits thirty two degrees you start to see white stuff falling from the sky. That white stuff is otherwise known as snow. Many people think snow is white, but it’s actually translucent. Snow is water that has been frozen as it falls. So, how to do snowflakes form?  

    Snowflakes begin to form when it's extremely cold outside, snowflakes are water droplets that freeze into pollen or dust particles in the sky. This creates the shape of the snowflake, and as the snow falls to the ground water vapor freezes onto the crystal and begins building new crystals. Some may have heard that two snowflakes are never the same, and many scientists believe in that theory. Will we ever know? Maybe if someone collected every snowflake to fall during a snowstorm we would know the answer to that question, but is that really possible?

    The most amount of snow to fall in a twenty four hour period of time is 78.5 inches of snow. That's a lot of shoveling! It happened in Silver Lake, Colorado on April 14-15 of the year 1921. At Mile 47 Camp located in Alaska almost had Colorado beat when they had a snowstorm where 78.0 inches of snow was calculated in just the first twenty four hours of the storm. In Alaska it happened during the year of 1963.  Alaska was beat by half of an inch and Colorado still holds the record for the most amount of snow in twenty four hours. 

    Here are some facts about snowflakes:

- Every year we get a lot of snow

- It’s an estimated 1 septillion of ice crystals (snowflakes) fall from the sky in the U.S. alone.

- A septillion has 24 zeros!

- One inch of snow can make about 1/10 of an inch of water.

- About a million billion snowflakes fall each second, that's averaged over a typical year.

- A snowflake has six sides.

There are tons of cool facts to learn about snowflakes that you may never have known. 

    Snow has many advantages, like sledding and snowboarding, and making snowmen. Many fun activities can be had after and during it snows. I love having snow days and getting days off of school, even though we have to add on days at the end of the year. When it's snowing hot chocolate is a great way to warm up. I love the snow, and it’s one of my favorite things about winter.