Lacy crystals
Look up during a snowstorm. Watch the snowflakes come spinning down
out of the sky. You can see that snowflakes aren’t drops, like rain;
or lumps, like hail; or tiny beads, like sleet. They look more like
little ragged feathers.When you look at a snowflake through a magnifying glass, you see a
beautiful, six-sided, lacy shape. Even though most snowflakes are
different from each other, they all have this kind of shape. A small
snowflake is made of just one of these shapes, or crystals, but large
snowflakes are made of several crystals stuck together. Sometimes
snowflakes are as big as large coins.Snowflakes are formed high at the top of storm clouds, where the air
is freezing cold. Each snowflake is a tiny bit of water
vapor—gas—that freezes suddenly, without first changing into
water. Because of this, instead of becoming a bead or ball of ice, it
becomes a lacy crystal that forms around a tiny bit of dust.Snow can form high in the sky, even in summertime. But when snow falls
in summertime, it melts and becomes rain as soon as it reaches warm
air.
