The science of snowflakes: See how they form and why no two are ever alike Snow is made up of trillions of tiny ice crystals that make snowflakes, with not one alike.

Precipitation begins in clouds as water droplets and ice crystals. ... The National Weather Service has a very handy graphic to help explain the differences. Rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow, ...

As ice crystals start to form, the concentration of sugars and other dissolved materials in the unfrozen liquid increases, which further lowers its freezing point.

As ice crystals grow and clump together, they become too heavy to stay aloft. With the help of gravity, they begin to fall back down through and eventually out of the cloud.

As the ice crystal falls to the ground, water vapor freezes onto the primary crystal, building new crystals. Microscopic view of snowflakes by Wilson Bentley. From the Annual Summary of the ...

As the ice crystals fall down to the surface of the Earth, they can pass through air of all different temperatures! That's simply what creates different precipitation types.

The shape of the ice crystal is the key. It's called a plate, and it's shaped like a hexagon. They must be light enough to float very slowly down from the sky, or almost be suspended in the air.

Sundogs are formed when light passes through hexagonal plate crystals of ice, suspended in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds located at altitudes of around 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) and higher, up to ...

A plane loaded with scientists and their equipment has been flying through frozen skies this winter, sampling cloud particles to improve predictions of which storms will wreak havoc on the ground.