Image caption, From a single ice crystal, these amazing patterns form according to different weather conditions. Snowflakes are renowned for their uniqueness. No matter how many billions of them ...

However, barring some extremely anomalous weather patterns, the mountains surrounding the ... of the tiny droplets freeze before they hit the ground. Natural snow starts as a tiny ice crystal on an ...

“At low temperatures, the snow deforms slower,” Sturm said of the bending snow phenomenon. “In warmer places like Colorado, a ...

and it is generally not possible to explain why even simple crystals develop their characteristic shapes. A case in point is the snow crystal, which grows into a puzzling variety of unusual ...

but these are freshly fallen snowflakes, or snow crystals, resting on wool. They are around 1 millimeter in size and were captured using a simple, cheap photography technique. When the snow starts ...