Stacey Myrum, age 14, of Rengilly, Minn., for her question:
HOW DOES A SNOWFLAKE RECEIVE ITS SHAPE?
Record snowfall for one season in the United States was set July, 1970 to June, 1971, when 1,027 inches fell at Rainier Paradise Ranger Station in Washington. Record for a 24 hour storm is the 76 inch snowfall at Silver Lake, Colorado, in 1921. The heaviest four day storm left 108 inches of new snow on the ground at Lake Tahoe, Calif., following a storm in January, 1952.
When water vapor in clouds freezes, shimmering ice crystals called snowflakes form. If the falling snowflakes pass through warm air, they melt and appear on the earth's surface as rain or sleet.
Snow falls only on about one third of the earth's surface. Because of this, there are lots of people who have never seen snow.
In the polar regions, snow falls in all seasons. In the temperate zones, snow may fall only in winter and sometimes not at all. The heaviest snowfalls in the world happen in the mountainous areas of the temperate zone, such as the Sierra Nevada range in the Rocky Mountains in the United States and in the Alps of Austria, Italy and Switzerland.
Nature always makes the snowflake fall as a tiny six¬sided crystal. It receives its shape as water vapor is frozen. No two snow crystals are exactly alike. Sometimes the snowflake is flat and other times it may form long needles. Snow crystals sometimes stick together to form snow pellets over one inch thick.
Tiny ice crystals of fresh snow reflect light and make the snow appear white. If you were to look closely, you might find that microscopic plants sometimes change the color of snow after it has fallen. Greenland and other Arctic locations sometimes have red and green snow on the ground.
There is a lot less water in snow than in rain. It takes a six inch layer of moist snow or a 30 inch layer of dry snow to equal the water in a one inch rainfall.
As the great drifts of snowflakes melt, water is provided for streams, irrigation reservoirs and electric¬power plants.
A stud snowflake comes from a great height and it is formed only in very cold temperatures. It is made up of two plates which are arranged one above the other and attached by a short column. A record snowfall for a calendar month happened in Tamarack, Calif., where 390 inches of snow fell in January, 1911.
In the hills to the southeast of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, the average winter snowfall is over 150 inches.