In the early 1900s, Wilson A. Bentley sent 500 prints of his snowflakes to the Smithsonian to ensure their safety for the future. The images are now part of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.

The first way that people tried to make “real” snow was by seeding natural clouds ... to create snowmaking machines that can grow fluffy natural snow crystals. Scientists have been growing snowflakes ...

but these are freshly fallen snowflakes, or snow crystals, resting on wool. They are around 1 millimeter in size and were captured using a simple, cheap photography technique. When the snow starts ...

Like snowflakes ... of tiny crystals can become a matter of life and death. Supercooled water droplets can latch on to ice crystals creating a bumpy surface. Snow layers composed of smooth ...

and it is generally not possible to explain why even simple crystals develop their characteristic shapes. A case in point is the snow crystal, which grows into a puzzling variety of unusual ...

Look out the window - it’s snowing! Let’s go make a snowman! But hold on - what is snow? Snow is a form of precipitation, just like rain and sleet. When it is very cold, tiny ice crystals ...