As winter storms dump heavy snow across the mid-Atlantic and Midwest, we’re revisiting these stunning snowflake photos from nature photographer Don Komarechka. Komarechka’s images, captured in his own backyard, were used by researchers to understand formations they could not generate in their own high-tech snowflake-production labs. Snowflakes are formed when water freezes around dust. The shape of snowflakes depends on temperature, humidity and wind speed. Slide 1: The classic image of a snowflake. This stellar, or star-shaped, flake with six-arms is about eight to nine millimeters across. Slide 2: This is a plate snowflake that grew branches, fused its arms and then branched out again, showing how drastically the tiny structures can change over time. Slide 3: This is a triangular snowflake. This rare geometry might appear when the temperature is just below freezing. Slide 4: This is a hexagonal plate snowflake. The icicle and exclamation point shapes pointing toward the center are bubbles. Slide 5: This is a column snowflake. This shape formed when a long and skinny flake was hit with frozen water droplets called rime. 📸 Don Komarechka ✏ Leslie Nemo See more snowflake shapes at the link in our bio.
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