It’s Snow Joke

Everyone wants the white stuff to make it feel like Christmas. That white powder puts people in a Christmassy mood. Songs like “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow” floods the radio during the holidays. Snowflakes shows the true gift of God’s design. Did you know that it takes over 500,00 snowflakes to pack a good snowball? Snowflakes are as unique as our fingerprint, a retina design and your DNA. Amazing don’t you think? Watching it snow, experiencing a blizzard, seeing all those mountain tops covered with snow—and each snowflake is unique.

Snow covered sidewalks, windshields, trees and rooftops are beautiful to gaze upon. Snow is fun to play with and far more complex in structure and composition than anyone ever imagined. These little white “flakey” entices fascinate physicists and scientists. They really are God-made miniature miracles of nature.

What do we really know of snow? We know this, it is all God-controlled. He has access to each speck of snow before it hits earth. For all we know and all the unknowns about snow’s designs, sizes, weights, composites and technical structures it is still much a mystery and highly technical. When we start to get too big for our scientific britches, we should remember what God said to Job: “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail?” Job 38-22

Snowflakes are formed when water vapor freezes specks of dust high in the earth’s atmosphere. As icy crystal droplets fall through the sky, it bumps and knocks against other crystals, melting a little and refreezing a little on the way to the ground, falling to earth in a journey different from that of any other snowflake. It really is a miracle. And what would Christmas time be without singing, “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, jingle all the way, O what fun it is to ride in a one-horse opened sleigh, O’re the fields we go laughing all the way” all the while dashing through the snow. What fun that must be on a moonlit night while bells on bobtails ring.

These little critters have six sides, mostly needle-pointed or rod-shaped designs, sometimes powdery, sometimes wet, and when the temperatures are colder they become larger and more complex in formation. The world’s largest snowflake was found to be 15 inches wide and nearly 8 inches thick. This monster was found in Fort Keogh, Montana, according to January 26, 1887 record-keeping.

Research finds that people buy more cookies, cakes, candy and fruits when there’s a blizzard or snowstorm in the forecast. A snow blizzard is very dangerous. A blizzard occurs when visibility is less than ¼ mile and winds are 40 plus miles per hour. This storm must last at least 4 hours weathermen say to be classified a blizzard. Any conditions less is just a snowstorm. Causing damage to people, trees, rooftops, roads, power lines and traffic nightmares. But we love the excitement of an impending snow. School children love the sound of the local news broadcasts saying schools are closed due to snow. Millions have been made on sleds and shovels and millions lost on salt, brine, and accidents. Wind, cold, moisture, temperature, humidity, height while tumbling through the atmosphere creates unusual combinations of these crystal shapes that make snowflakes; dendrites, plates, needles, thin and solid plates, hollow columns and capped columns just to describe snowflakes. Awe inspiring!

When it is extremely cold, snow is fine and powdery, and the snowflakes are simpler in design, usually like needles and rods. When the temperature is closer to just freezing snowflakes are larger and become more complex in design. At 22 degrees, snowflakes form hollow columns. At 23 degrees, flakes form needles. In bitter cold below minus 30 degrees snowflakes stop forming altogether. Scientists and research cannot explain why. They do say that one should bundle up under layers of warm clothing and water-proof and wind-proof materials, hence, all way home you’ll be home. As the song says, “As long as you love me so, Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.”

Hexagonal prism is the most basic snow crystal geometry. Prisms can be thin as plates, slender columns or anything in between. Dendrite means tree-like. Stellar dendrites have branches and side branches like an asterisk *. They are typically large crystals. The best powder snow is made of stellar dendrites. Not any good for a snowball fight or building snow-forts. It’s nonetheless still beautiful. Snow makes the world look cleaner, more pristine, cozy, even though it’s cold. “He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain shower, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’ So that everyone He has made may know his work.” Job 37:5-7

As those tree tops glisten and crooner singer Bing Crosby serenades: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know. Where the tree-tops glisten and children listen, to hear sleigh bells in the snow. I’m dreamin’ of a white Christmas with every Christmas card I write. May your days be merry and bright and may all your Christmas’ be white.”