The Secret Lives of Snowflakes

Reported February 2007

GREENBELT, Md. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- When a fresh batch of snow falls, it's not long before the fun starts! Now, add a little more fun by catching snow. It's a fun, easy way to help planetary scientists collect and identify snowflakes for the new Global Snowflake Network.

"We're trying to produce teams all over the world that look at snow wherever it falls and then identify the shape and any other characteristics of the snow," Peter Wasilewski, Ph.D., a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., tells Ivanhoe.

Catch snow on dark paper, and then use a magnifying glass to look closely at each snowflake. The shapes tell a lot about winter weather.

Dr. Wasilewski says, "The shape of a snowflake says something about the temperature and the moisture content in the clouds where the snowflakes form and begin to grow." Just below freezing temperatures, snowflakes form shapes called plates. A dendrite plate looks like a typical snowflake. As the temperature drops, flakes turn into columns and look more like needles. The colder it gets, the shapes switch between plates and columns.

Spotting unique shapes helps track a storm's movement.

"You can see that the beginning of the storm, the middle of the storm, and the end of the storm all have different snowflake shapes," Dr. Wasilewski says. "Each snowstorm has a story to tell."

You can then record your snowflake shapes online, submit them, and help scientists get a global picture of snow.

The Global Snowflake Network Web site is at http://education.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsn/.

The American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Peter Wasilewski, Ph.D.
Astrophysicist
Laboratory for Extraterrestrial Physics
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD
(301) 286-8317
peter.wasilewski@gsfc.nasa.gov

American Meteorological Society
45 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108-3693
(617) 227-2425

American Geophysical Union
Washington, DC 20009-1277
(800) 966-2481

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