Fun Snow Info

Since we’ve had a few snow storms in the past weeks I thought I’d give you some fun snow information.  You may wonder how many snowflakes fall during a storm, but what about for a full year on the entire Earth?  Well that would be one septillion snowflakes, or a one followed by twenty four zeros (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). As those flakes fall, they tumble through the air on average at 4.4 feet per second or right around three miles per hour.  Now, dealing with those individual flakes, each has six sides and the simple explanation of why – is because of how hydrogen bonds.  That binding dictates the shape of the ice crystal and it just so happens to be a hexagonal structure. So, that would be why we see six sided snowflakes. 

Also Snow is actually clear not white, and that’s all thanks to the reflection of light.  Light bends as it goes through the snowflake, that light then enters and bends into another snowflake, and another, and another until the white light is reflected back to you.  Now the more flakes that the light reflects through, the more it will take on a bluish tint. So a large pile of snow may appear blue.

As for US snow records, the most snow in one day is seventy five point eight inches in Silver Lake Colorado.  This occurred about 30 miles northwest of Denver and on April 14th and 15th in 1921.  That would be six point three feet in one day, but the storm kept going and in twenty seven and a half hours they received 95 inches or about 8 feet of snow.  The yearly record for snow goes to the Mount Baker Ski Area in Washington state which saw 1,140 inches or 95 feet in the 1998 to 1999 season.