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It is a quiet joy and delight to stand in the silence of a gentle snowfall with the world hushed and gray around you. The soft white snowflakes tickle your face as they land and promptly melt. You hold out your mittened hands and a delicate bit of lace lands there only to disappear in the blink of an eye. A magical gift of nature, no two snowflakes are exactly alike. Some look like pointy stars, some like a flower with six simple petals and others like intricate lace.

Many of our Tribune readers live in parts of the country that enjoy snow while others can only read about it. But everyone knows whether from real life experience or from pictures and books, the beauty of snowflakes.

How are all these unique and lovely snowflakes formed? Strange as it may seem, the creation of a clean, white snowflake starts with a tiny speck of dust or dirt that has been carried up into the atmosphere by the wind. Ice collects around the soil speck and a snow crystal is formed. Snow crystals later combine to make snowflakes.

Snow crystals form in four basic shapes; a long needle, a long, hollow, six-sided prism, a thin, flat, six-sided plate and a complex six-pointed star.

The shape of the crystal is determined by temperature.

• The six-sided prism is formed in the highest clouds where the temperature is -30′F.
• Star shaped crystals are formed if the cloud temperature is from 3′ to 10′F.
• The flat, six-sided plates appear in 10′-18′F and reappear in temperatures of 27′-32′F.
• The long needle is formed from 23′-27′F.

These tiny snow crystals grow and grow and as they do so they become heavier, causing them to fall towards Earth. All those falling snow crystals can’t help but bump into each other and that’s how snowflakes are formed. Each snowflake is made of up of anywhere from 2 to 200 separate snow crystals that have joined together in their tumble through the clouds!

While snowflakes can share many similarities like the number of their sides, their size and basic shape, no two are identical. Each and every snowflake is a beautiful and unique gift of nature.