#MEwx Sun, clouds and mild with an explanation of how snowflakes are formed
I’ve put up an Ambient WS 5000 weather station where you can view real time weather readings from my location online by clicking here.
REMEMBER TO SET YOUR CLOCKS AHEAD ONE HOUR TONIGHT BEFORE BED!
This morning we have mostly cloudy skies with highs around 40°F. Winds are Northeast around 10 mph.
Tonight we’ll have partly cloudy conditions with lows in the lower 20s. Winds will be North around 10 mph gusting to 20 mph.
We didn’t receive any rain or snow here over the past 24 hours.
The wind is East Northeast between 1.6 MPH and 4.9 MPH.
The Relative pressure is 29.66, the Absolute pressure is 29.46 and rising with a weather graphic indicating sun and a few clouds.
Visibility is 10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers with partly cloudy skies.
The UV index is 1 placing the average person at low risk and the solar radiation reading is 111.1W/m2. Sunrise is 6:00 AM, sunset is 5:40 PM, moonrise is 10:19 PM and Moonset is 7:42 AM. The moon is Waning Gibbous and is 87% illuminated. We’ll have 11 hours 41 minutes of daylight today. The next Full Moon is on April 6 with our next new moon being on March 21, 2023 .
Just exactly how do snowflakes form? Thanks to Weather.gov for the following answer.
Q: How are snowflakes formed?
A: A snowflake begins to form when an extremely cold water droplet freezes onto a pollen or dust particle in the sky. This creates an ice crystal. As
the ice crystal falls to the ground, water vapor freezes onto the primary crystal, building new crystals – the six arms of the snowflake.
That’s the short answer.
The more detailed explanation is this:
The ice crystals that make up snowflakes are symmetrical (or patterned) because they reflect the internal order of the crystal’s water molecules as they
arrange themselves in predetermined spaces (known as “crystallization”) to form a six-sided snowflake.
Ultimately, it is the temperature at which a crystal forms — and to a lesser extent the humidity of the air — that determines the basic shape of the ice
crystal. Thus, we see long needle-like crystals at 23 degrees F and very flat plate-like crystals at 5 degrees F.
The intricate shape of a single arm of the snowflake is determined by the atmospheric conditions experienced by entire ice crystal as it falls. A crystal
might begin to grow arms in one manner, and then minutes or even seconds later, slight changes in the surrounding temperature or humidity causes the crystal
to grow in another way. Although the six-sided shape is always maintained, the ice crystal (and its six arms) may branch off in new directions. Because
each arm experiences the same atmospheric conditions, the arms look identical.
Q: So, why are no two snowflakes exactly alike?
A: Well, that’s because individual snowflakes all follow slightly different paths from the sky to the ground —and thus encounter slightly different atmospheric
conditions along the way. Therefore, they all tend to look unique, resembling everything from prisms and needles to the familiar lacy pattern.
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