Jerry Dennis's work can be found in other magazines including the Smithsonian and Outdoor Life. He is the author of A Place on the Water as well. Glenn Wolff's illustrations appear regularly in the New York Times and many other publications.
This selection appeared in their 1993 book, It's Raining Frogs and Fishes, which offers answers to the questions countless children (and adults) ask of the world around them. The pair recently released the follow-up book, The Bird in the Waterfall: A Natural History of Oceans, Rivers and Lakes.
Stellar crystals (or simply "stars") are the classic, most
familiar form of snow crystals, and the basis of the "no two alike"
myth. They are not as common as aggregate flakes, irregular crystals, or
asymmetrical crystals but we are familiar with them because of countless
artists' renditions.
In addition to the basic crystals, snow can form into ice pellets when it
is buffeted by strong winds that break off the points of the crystals and
pack them into tiny balls. Graupel is formed by crystals falling
through layers of supercooled droplets of water vapor which remain liquid
as long as they are suspended in the air, but freeze the instant they come
in contact with anything solid and coat it in a dense covering of rime frost.
In places where snow is a frequent companion, it is sometimes personified
as a living thing. In Japanese folktales it is Yuki-onne, the Snow Woman,
who appears before men wandering in snowstorms and lures them to sleep and
death. In Nordic mythology snow is the Old Man, an eged king of Finland
named Snaer, whose daughters are Thick Snow, Thin Snow, and Snowstorm. To
the Inuits of the far north snow appears in so many forms and shapes it
requires an advanced vocabulary to describe it. To them, api is snow
not yet touched by wind; upsik is snow changed by wind into a firm mass;
siqoq is smoky snow blowing along the surface of the ground; annui
is falling snow; quali is snow that sticks to the branches of trees;
saluma roaq is a snow surface of very smooth and fine particles;
natatgonaq is a snow surface of rough and coarse particles; and det-thlok
is snow so deep snowshoes are required to walk in it. Dozens of variations--as
many as 200, by some accounts--make it possible for Inuits and Eskimos to
speak more precisely about snow than anyone on earth.
The winter vocabulary of the English language is growing. We have adopted
the Russian word sastrugi to describe windblown drifts, common in
the Artic and Antarctica, that look like waves of water. Cross-country and
alpine skiers have adapted a litany of descriptive slang expressions to
identify the conditions they encounter on their skis. Among them are such
colorful terms as windslab, glop, fluff, neve, breakable crust, crud,
sugar, corn, boilerplate, and cement.
Explorers in Antarctica found to their dismay that in extremely cold
temperatures (-50 is not uncommon) snow can become unskiable. At those temperatures,
the tiny ice crystals that fall almost continuously, even from clear skies,
create a dry, harsh surface more like sand than snow. Skis and sled runners,
instead of melting the points of the crystals to make them slippery, merely
roll the crystals over and over.
Snow changes continuously as it falls and after it has landed. Once on the
ground, snowflakes trap tiny air pockets and form an excellent natural insulation.
Temperatures on the surface can be more than 50 degrees colder that temperatures
beneath seven inches of loose, fresh snow. As the snow settles is metamorphoses.
"Old snow" is settled and dense, resulting from the altering of
loose, pointed crystals into small, round grains. Later it becomes firn,
with spaces between the grains shrinking, resulting in compacting and hardening
of snow. If metamorphosis continues long enough, firn can become glacial
ice.
During any ordinary snowfall in New England or North Dakota or British Columbia
or Siberia or Finland, about 1 million crystals of snow fall to cover each
two-foot square area with ten inches of snow. Snow covers about half the
land on the earth's surface, at least for part of each year, as well as
about ten percent of the oceans. About 48 million square miles of the earth
are covered year round with snow or ice.
The greatest snowfall in a twenty-four-hour period recorded in North America
occurred on April 14 and 15, 1921, when seventy-six inches of snow fell
on Silver Lake, Colorado. More recently, on April 5 and 6, 1969, Bessans,
France, was buried beneath sixty-eight inches of snow in nineteen hours.
During a snowstorm from February 13 to 19, 1959, 189 inches fell on the
Mount Shasta Ski Bowl in northern California. The snowiest place on record
in North America is Ranier Paradise Ranger Station in Washington, where
in the winter of 1971-72 a total of 1,122 inches of snow fell. The greatest
depth of snow ever measured on the ground at one time in North America was
451 inches--over 37 1/2 feet--at Tamarack, California on March 11, 1911.
Oddly enough, the interior of Antarctica recieves very little snow. Most
of the precipitation at that coldest spot on earth falls in the form of
ice crystals, with an annual precipitation equal to less than two inches
of water--only slightly more than falls on the Sahara Desert each year.
The vast ice cap at the center of the continent grows, but only slowly,
over millions of years.
"As pure as the snow," may not be the purest of metaphors. Snow,
it seems, contains much more than just frozen moisture and air. In fact
it contains enough nitrates, calcium, sulphate, and potassium picked up
from dust and atmospheric gases to make it an important source of agricultural
nutrients in many parts of the world. It also contains less savory traces
of industrial pollution. When snow crystals form in air contaminated with
sulphur dioxide the result is acid snow, which accumulates on the ground
in winter and releases highly acidic meltwater into rivers and lakes in
the spring.
The best time to catch and observe snow crystals is when the temperature
is moderately cold (about 25 degrees Farenheit is ideal), with no wind to
throw the flakes against each other and break their points. The crystals
fall individually, or more often, sticking together in loose clusters that
fall apart into separate crystals when they land. Wear a dark jacket or
carry a piece of dark-colored fabric stretched over cardboard, and after
it has been acclimated to the outside temperature, it will preserve even
the finest, most delicate crystals until you have had time to examine them.
Most crystals are an eighth of an inch or less in diameter, much smaller
than we are led to expect from the representation on Christmas card. Mixed
with those eighth inchers are occasional midgets hardly larger than the
dot on this letter i. Occasionally comes a behemoth, perfectly symmetrical
and ornate as baroque jewelry, measuring as big around as a pencil eraser.
Those giants spiral slowly downward, their flat surfaces horizontal, and
are especially satisfying to catch on sleeve or tongue.