Category: "Snow Science"
Martini Hoar (raise a tiny glass?)
October 19th, 2019The hoar-frost crystal shoots up like a thin, solid straw, then suddenly opens up into a cup-like shape. I have seen it often enough to give it a name: "martini hoar". The cup can be weirdly segmented and polyhedral, but it nevertheless widens suddenly.… more »
Thinking Laterally in Crystal Growth…and in Science Publishing
October 10th, 2019After a long period of work (on and off), we have an accepted paper on the corner pockets we discovered (see here). But during the writing stage, I thought about collecting earlier ideas I had developed during my correspondence with Prof. Akira… more »
Dark lines in melting snowpiles
March 30th, 2019Snow cleared from a city street slowly vanishes, leaving lines of "dirt". [image:131] (Click on images to view more closely.) Where the snow has a distinct edge, you can see the dark lines are ridges, some of which can be quite sharp: [image:132] Why is… more »
Poster on corner pockets in snow crystals
February 18th, 2019Last July, I attended the AMS (American Meteorological Society) 15th Conference on Cloud Physics, which was combined with a similar conference on atmospheric radiation. They have these about every four years, but I have missed all those going back to… more »
Bad Snow
November 28th, 2017This post is about the misrepresenting of snow crystals in public, not about misbehaving crystals and not about snow that has gotten dirty. No doubt you've seen it, the Christmas card with four-pointed "snow" falling, or the sweater with an… more »
Columns!
January 18th, 2017The poor columns get left out of nearly all snow-crystal discussions, but they are an interesting type. So, to help them out a bit, here's my first column appreciation post. Let's start with perhaps the most extreme column of all, the Shimizu prism*:… more »
How clouds form snow
January 14th, 2017To understand snow formation, one must know a little about clouds. Q: What is in a cloud? A: Air, dust, vapor, droplets, and often, ice. Q: How much air? How much liquid water? How much ice? A: The answers will probably surprise you. See my short… more »
Snow Science: an annotated list to topics
December 17th, 2016For those interested in the science of snow, I give an annotated list of relevant blog links. [image:45] I) Seminar about snow science (sequence of four videos): http://www.storyofsnow.com/blog1.php/trip-of-the-ice-man II) All the different types… more »
Two-level nature of branched crystals
December 11th, 2016The common branched crystal looks like a paper cut-out, but actually has a complex 3-D nature. One aspect of this nature, which I have alluded to in prior posts, is the two-level structure: What appears to be happening on one plane, is actually… more »
How some snow crystals hide their droplet origin
December 5th, 2016Look closely at the center of a snow crystal. In many, or most, you will often not find a droplet center as we described in the previous post. Indeed, for the columnar crystals, you may never see a droplet center. As an example, look at the center of… more »
