Snowflakes

The snow is back after our recent thaw, and yesterday I picked up a magnifying glass in the backdoor clutter of boots and sidewalk chalk to examine the snowflakes that fell on the sleeve of my coat.

We’ve all noticed the singular beauty of a single snowflake. Maybe it was a long time ago. Maybe it was while waiting with our children for a bus or even up there shoveling the roof.

I pulled out the magnifying glass, however, after my daughter ordered a picture book called “Snowflake Bently” in the Scholastic Book Club flier from school.

We all know home grown experts—at engines or birds or generosity—and this book tells the story of Wilson Bently, “The Snowflake Man,” who was able, with daunting work, to share his singular love and knowledge of snowflakes with the world. Born on a farm in February, 1865 in Jericho, VT, “Willie” Bently loved the natural world. He was interested in weather and, while the other kids built forts and snowmen, Willie studied the snow.

When he was 15, his mother gave him her old microscope. Willie spent his winters waiting for storms so that he could try to draw snowflakes. He had to hold his breath, so as not to melt them. He had to move them carefully—sometimes with a turkey feather. But he couldn’t draw them fast enough.

“I found that snowflakes were masterpieces of design,” he said. “No design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted… just that much beauty was gone, without leaving a record behind.”

When he was 17, Willie convinced his parents to buy him a camera that had its own microscope. The camera made pictures on large glass negatives, and Willie spent two years figuring out how to take a photo of a snowflake. On January 15, 1885, he succeeded in making the first ever photomicrograph.

For the rest of his life, Willie photographed snowflakes. “I can’t afford to miss a single snowstorm,” he said. “I never know when I will find some wonderful prize.”

Eventually, as his work became known, people began to buy his photos and museums added them to their collections. People also collected money so that Willie could write a book. In 1931, when he was 66, Wilson Bently’s book “Snow Crystals” was published. It contained 2,453 of his photographs.

According to “Ken Libbrecht’s Field Guide to Snowflakes,” snowflakes are created when ice condenses directly from water vapor in the air.

Molecules of water attach to an ice speck to form symmetrical branches. As a snow crystal grows, the branches fuse together and trap small amounts of air.

Many conditions affect the way a snowflake will grow. Temperature, wind, more or less moisture will all factor to create different shaped branches. While most snowflakes have six branches, there are some with 12 and some with only three.”

The many Native American names for the different kinds of snow, as well as old proverbs like “If snowflakes increase in size, a thaw will follow,” speak to us of the unique conditions that create each snowfall.

And then there is John, my husband, a champion snow shoveler himself, with his name “Trucker’s Bones” for that dry, swirling snow that whispers across the road in the wake of the car.

Here are some names of some “common” types of snowflakes (organized mostly according to their “growth behavior”) from Libbrecht’s field guide: “Fernlike Stellar Dendrites,” “Crossed Needles,” “Capped Bullets,” and “Rimed Irregulars.”

You might even be walking around with “Arrowhead Twins” on your sleeve. Be on the lookout—but only for a moment.

The books mentioned in this column are “Snowflake Beauty,” by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, illustrated by Mary Azarian, Houghton Mifflin; and “Ken Libbrecht’s Field Guide to Snowflakes,” Voyageur Press.