Well, I hope everyone enjoyed the big snow storm. I was feeling very stuffy in the nose, so I stayed in while my boys and their Dad had snowball fights in the yard. I thought I was safe taking photos of them from the back door, but wouldn't you know, the boys both clobbered me with snowballs anyway, which splatted on my face and neck and rolled into the living room.

While I was cleaning up the snow from the floor, it got me thinking about snowflakes. I love that they come in a variety of shapes and sizes, although that's really hard to see with the naked eye. Under a microscope, the complex shapes can be better seen. The different shapes are the result of differing temperatures and level of humidity as the ice crystal moves through the atmosphere.

Generally, six-sided hexagonal crystals are shaped in high clouds; needles or flat six-sided crystals are shaped in middle height clouds; and a wide variety of six-sided shapes are formed in low clouds. Colder temperatures produce snowflakes with sharper tips on the sides of the crystals and may lead to branching of the snowflake arms (dendrites). Snowflakes that grow under warmer conditions grow more slowly, resulting in smoother, less intricate shapes.

A really good snowflake book is "Snowflake Bentley," a true story about a Vermont farm boy who was mesmerized by snowflakes. The boy, Wilson Bentley, was fascinated by the six-sided frozen phenomena, and once he acquired a microscope with a camera, his childhood preoccupation took on a more scientific leaning. Bentley spent his life taking countless exquisite photographs (many that are still used in nature photography today), examining the tiny crystals and their delicate, mathematical structures.

So there you have it! Have a great winter break everyone!