Welcome to You Ask Andy

Marie Singer, age 13, of Jeannette, Pa., for her question:

ARE ALL SNOWFLAKES DIFFERENT?

Did you know that most of the people on earth have never seen snow? The white stuff falls only on about one¬third of the world's surface, so a great many places where people live never experience snow. In the polar regions of earth the snow falls all through the year, but in these areas very few people live.

When snow falls, it often appears to be in large fluffy flakes. With the naked eye you can't tell that each flake is actually a tiny six sided crystal. You can't tell, either, that no two flakes are exactly alike. Each one has its own distinctive features.

Some snowflakes are flat, while others are in the form of long needles. Snow crystals often cling together and form snow pellets that are more than one inch thick.

When you see a field of fresh snow, it appears to be white. Tiny crystal surfaces of fresh snow reflect light and cause this white look. If you were to study the crystals through a microscope, however, you would find other colors are included.

There is much less water in snow than there is in rain. It will take a six inch layer of moist snow or a 30 inch layer of dry snow to equal the water in a one inch rainfall.

The retirement communities in Florida, Arizona and California are full of former Eastern residents who don't care how many sides each snow crystal has. They've lived through cold, wet winters and are happy to give them up.

Others, however, love the white stuff. Winter resorts attract millions of visitors who Record snowfall for the United States in any one season was set between July, 1970, and June, 1971, when 1,027 inches of snow fell at Rainier Paradise Ranger Station in Washington. Silver Lake, Colo., holds the record for the largest snowfall during a 24 hour period: 76 inches.

Greatest four day snowfall happened between Jan. 12 and 15 in 1952 at Tahoe, Calif., when a total of 108 inches fell. Record snowfall for a calendar month occurred in Tamarack, Calif., where 390 inches of snow fell during January, 1911. That same year, a record depth of accumulated snow was recorded in Tamarack: 454 inches.

This winter perhaps some of the records will be changed by more heavy snowfalls.

A man by the name of Vincent Schaefer produced the first artificial snow. It happened in Schenectady, N.Y. Moist air of his breath condensed into water clouds when he breathed into a deep freeze. He changed the clouds into snowflakes by inserting an extremely cold rod into the cloud. Since this first experiment, Schaefer and other scientists have made snow fall from water clouds in the sky by using various types of chemicals.

 

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