Around midnight, a gentle snow began to fall. It continues to come down, but the air temperature is still hovering right at the freezing point. Throughout the night I’d wake up and peek out the window to see snow falling onto wet streets – it was just a bit too warm for the snow crystals to not melt when they hit the pavement.

Come morning, the roads were slushy and slick, but the temperature remained stubbornly warm.

You never know till you try, so I caught a few falling flakes to see if I could get their photos. They began to melt the moment they landed on the glass plate, and by the time they were positioned beneath the camera lens, they were well-nigh gone.

One shot of one departing crystal, just before it became a drop of water (click on the picture for a larger image):

Here are two faces of water - crystal and liquid forms - together in the same place, briefly. These are not the only two forms of water, of course, but it's interesting to see them juxtaposed like this.

- Mark

I just confirmed that I’ll be interviewed on the Lori Moore Show – AM 590 WKZO Kalamazoo – around 9:45 a.m. on Friday, December 4. I expect we’ll be talking about The Story of Snow, the Art Hop at Nature Connection that evening, the upcoming “Buy Local” event at that Kalamazoo Nature Center, and about anything else that comes up!

Just for the fun of it - here is a snow crystal from 12/21/2008. We've had an unusually warm fall in Kalamazoo this year, so it's hard to believe that we'll be seeing snow like this in less than a month - but I can hope!

- Mark