Life Cycle of a Snowflake

Temperature Makes All the Difference

Dec 26, 2008

Snowflakes are totally different as the temperatures cycle downward, which accounts, in part, for each flake's uniqueness.

This why places like Aspen in Colorado are the slopes that skiers prefer to ski.

Step 2 – The snowflakes begin falling from the clouds because they have grown heavy.

Step 3 – They finally land on the ground where they form a blanket of snow.

That’s the simplified version. The more complicated version begins with the condensing of water vapor in the clouds into ice crystals. Those microscopic ice crystals range in size from .02 to 2 inches. As the ice crystals glide along inside the cloud on its updrafts and downdrafts the crystals gather more water vapor and grow larger. As they do this they become heavier and heavier, which finally leads to their falling from the cloud.

Once the crystals, or snowflakes, begin their descent to the ground below their shapes may be altered by how they fall. If they spin as they fall they are more likely to keep a symmetrical shape when they hit the ground. If they aren’t spinning, but falling on their sides, when they hit the ground they have lost the symmetrical shapes and become lumpy on landing.

The reason that snow packs range from powdery to moist is due to the humidity of the air in the area where they land. Powdery snow makes for excellent skiing, but doesn’t lend itself well to the making of snowmen and snowballs. In places where the snow is moister, snowballs and snowmen are better able to hold their shapes because the moist snow stays packed better.

Shapes of Ice Crystals

The shape of the ice crystals that form is dependent upon and influenced by the temperature, as stated by Bill Sheets, in his article “Lumpy, clumpy, crunchy”, in the December, 17, 2008 edition of Herald.

Though snowflakes are usually symmetrical in shape, their descent from above can change their shapes. These snowflakes are composed of many ice crystals, which also affects the shapes in which they form. An ice crystal may begin as a dendrite and end up as a thin plate. The only constant in the formation of a snowflake is that it is always 6-sided, or hexagonal. They range in size from ½-inch across to 1 ½ inches across.

References and Resources

The copyright of the article Life Cycle of a Snowflake in Climatology is owned by Tanja Meece. Permission to republish Life Cycle of a Snowflake in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.