Why Portland, OR and Seattle, WA Get Snow and Ice Storms

National Weather Service Winter Alerts Issued Thursday, February 11, 2021 for parts of Washington and Oregon. Note the Blizzard Warning for the tiny area on the map, The Columbia River Gorge.

Rough winter weather is being forecast for the Pacific Northwest. In fact, Blizzard Warnings were issued, not for the mountains, but the Columbia River Gorge only a few miles from Portland.  In Portland and Seattle Winter Storm Warnings were posted. Don't these cities normally just gets clouds and rain in winter?  Yes, for the most part they do, however under specific weather patterns, they can get their share of winter weather.  

I find mountain weather so very interesting. Combine the largest ocean in the world on one side of these Pacific Northwest cities and some of the tallest and snowiest mountains in North America to the east and you get a wonderful natural laboratory to study the weather!

Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington are located on the Pacific Northwest Coast in between the warm and moist Pacific Ocean to the west and the towering Cascade Mountains to the east.  Because of their proximity to the coast and their sea level elevation, both cities receive very little in the way of winter weather.  In fact, Portland receives only 4.3 inches of snow annually and Seattle gets just a bit more at 6.8 inches.

You will want to look closely at two features on the map above, The Fraser River Valley in southern British Columbia, Canada up north and the Columbia Rover Gorge in the southern part of the map.  These two geographic features play a big role in wintry weather for Seattle and Portland. 

The biggest reason these two locations do not get much snow is that it is just too warm long the coast to see much in the way of frozen precipitation. Essentially, The Cascades act as a gigantic wall to keep the cold air that comes down out of Canada to the east of the mountains, protecting the West Coast from frequent outbreaks of really cold air.  

Down along the coast, at sea-level there aren’t many ways to get cold enough for snow or ice.  Just east of the coast however, it snows “to beat the band” in the Cascades because higher elevations alone produce a much colder environment, one that is much more favorable for snow.  The temperature drops a little more than 3 degrees for every 1,000 ft. elevation. If you go up 5-10 thousand feet that's a 15 to 30 degree drop in temperature, more than enough in the winter to make snow.  The extra lift created by prevailing westerly onshore winds heading up the slopes of these 10,000+ ft. mountains also wrings out more precipitation from the moisture-laden air. 

It’s crazy when you realize that Seattle is only about 50 miles as the crow flies from Mt Rainier. The mountain tops out at 14,411 ft. and at the Paradise Ranger Station, elevation 5400 ft., they average 639 inches of snow each winter. Back in the winter of 1971-72 they picked up 1,122 inches of snow, a world record at that time, while Seattle averages 6.8" of snow.

Wow!! What a difference 50 miles makes. This may be one of the greatest differences in annual snowfall over such a small distance. 

So, what does it take to get snowfall in locations like Seattle and Portland, its neighbor to the south? Well, you need a way to get cold air across the Cascades and into those coastal areas. A few times each winter season, the large-scale weather pattern sets up to provide a way to get that dense, cold air across the mountains.  Those conditions begin with the presence of an Arctic High Pressure system over western Canada that pushes very cold air down along the east side of the western mountain ranges.

Seattle

In Seattle and locales around the Olympic Peninsula, that cold air can come through gaps in the mountains that are to the east.  Under conditions with strong High Pressure east of the Cascades and Low Pressure just off the Pacific coast, a pressure gradient develops from east to west. The wind wants to blow from high to low pressure, like letting air out of a balloon. The really cold and dense air from east of the Cascades wants to get west, but it’s so dense it is tough to get over the mountains.  However, where there are gaps in the mountains, it offers a perfect gateway for the air to move through, sometimes all the way to the coast.  

The Fraser River Valley, just across the Canadian border in British Columbia serves as a significant gateway for that arctic air to pass through and it is often responsible for pre-conditioning the temperature of the lower atmosphere with cold air to produce snowfall.

Portland

Portland has some of the same characteristics as Seattle, but is located about 100 miles south.  Instead of getting cold air through the Fraser River Outflow, Portland is right at the mouth of the Columbia River, which runs from east to west through the Cascades and down to the coast. 

The gorge is the only near sea level gap through the Cascades. Its average width is about 3 miles at river level.  It stretches 120 miles back to the east and the western entrance is less than 15 miles from Portland.  The crest of the Cascades lies about 45 mi east of Portland.  

One of the most beautiful places in the world in my book, The Columbia River Gorge features some amazing weather, including strong winds that allow for some great wind surfing. In winter, maybe not as inviting.

 

In fact, Portland Oregon gets a majority of its wintry weather when the winds are out of an easterly direction. On a broad sense of course, you would be hard pressed to get snow or ice from the westerly winds coming off that warm ocean.  However, similar to Washington State, a large pressure gradient between arctic air and strong High Pressure to the east of the Cascades and Low pressure off the Pacific Coast results in a flow of cold, dense air from east to west through the gorge.  

The graph below shows, without a doubt, the dependence on wind direction to produce wintry precipitation in Portland.  When the low-level winds are from the east and the mid-level flow is from the west, it becomes the “perfect storm” of sorts for snow or ice.  Snow will occur under conditions when the atmosphere is also cold aloft.  Typically, that comes with closed upper levels “cold-core” Lows.  However, if the air aloft is warm and the easterly gap winds are below freezing, then precipitation formed way up in the clouds in the form of snow melts as it drops through the warmer mid-levels then refreezes as it hits the surface where the temperatures are below the freezing mark. 

The distribution of annual snowfall and freezing rain vs. wind direction clearly shows just how important the role of easterly winds is for wintry weather in Portland, Oregon. 

The soundings below, taken at Salem Oregon, show the difference in the temperature throughout the atmosphere for snow vs. ice events in the Lowlands in Oregon to the west of the mountains including Portland. Notice the above-freezing layer in the sounding on the left, perfect for melting snow which then freezes on contact where surface temperatures are well below freezing. The sounding on the right shows above freezing surface temperatures but the atmosphere quickly cools below freezing a few hundred feet off the ground. That temperature and moisture profile results in heavy, wet snow. 

No, they don’t get too many snowstorms or ice storms in the Pacific Northwest, but they are more common than you might think in places like Seattle and Portland. You just need the proper ingredients to come together in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Voila, you have the recipe for winter weather.

Photographing Snow Crystals - On A Budget

 

 

If you have read some of my other blog entries, you know how interested I am in snow crystals.  I have seen some amazing photographs from scientists in many publications, but these guys all have a couple things in common; they usually are connected to some sort of university where resources are endless, and they also put thousands of dollars into sophisticated equipment to get the photos.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I wish I could do that too, but I am on a budget, so I decided to share some of my methods for taking photographs and enjoying nature without spending an arm and a leg.  Over the past few years, I have experimented with much more affordable ways to photograph snow crystals and I think the results have been pretty good as my blog “Mother Nature’s Snow Crystal Workshop” discusses.

I will begin by noting that you need cold weather of course to photograph with any success. If it’s close to the freezing mark and the sun is out, those snow crystals will melt as soon as they hit a surface. At a minimum, I want to outdoor temperature to be at 27°F or colder.  You also want to be watching for tiny flakes falling from the sky. Those big, fluffy flakes you see coming down are not individual flakes, they are made up of hundreds of individual snow crystals. Check out the photo below. This is what is left of one of those half-dollar sized flakes after it landed on my back deck.  I hope this shows how closely you need to look for those beautiful snow crystals.

Setting Up Your Workspace - Don’t Breathe On The Snow Crystals!!

Before we go further into how to view and photograph snow crystals, there are some important ground rules to remember.  First and foremost, in the excitement of looking at a snow crystal, remember that one warm breath can melt that beauty away in an instant. So, be careful to not breathe on them!  Below is my typical workspace, a piece of black felt or fleece on my deck railing. It is being held down by a couple pieces of firewood to keep the fleece from blowing off the deck. 

Prime Weather Conditions

As I noted, I like to work under conditions where the air temperature is at about 27°F or colder.  If it’s warmer than that, it’s tough for the snowflakes to hang around long enough before they begin to melt. I also like to work under calm wind conditions.  Brisk winds can easily break the delicate crystals on their way down to earth, so you end up with a lot of fragments rather than a nice symmetrical dendrite.  If plates or columns are falling, calm conditions aren’t as critical but it helps. Try to photograph on a day when it’s not bright sunshine. I like to get out right after sunrise and sometimes will work at night with the help of a couple of cheap LED flashlights (less than $2) to keep the sun from melting the snow crystals as I collect them. 

Also, be ready to get cold quickly.  Dress warmly for the time you will spend outside.  You will need a thin set of gloves to help maneuver the crystals and your camera to get the best photos.  I can’t tell you how often I step into the house to warm my fingers before heading back out to photograph again. 

Photo Setup 

For my iPhone and camera photography, I normally want to get good contrast between the crystal and the background.  That is why I use my black fleece jacket or a piece of black fleece or felt from a fabric store (Walmart less than $2).

The fleece and felt collects crystals nicely, and since those materials are not perfectly smooth, they can trap the crystals so they do not get easily blown away by even the slightest winds. I have also taken a piece of smooth, clear plexiglass and spray painted it black for a background (total cost ~$4). In calm winds you can get some nice photographs off that smoother surface as well.   However, dark surfaces absorb even more solar energy, so be aware that even if its marginally cold outside, solar insolation, even coming from behind clouds, may quickly melt crystals on those dark surfaces. 

Below are some of the "tools of my trade".  I have a little coni/stamp magnifying glass that I can use to look at snow crystals close-up. However, because my face is so close to the crystal, I must hold my breathe while looking at them. Next is my iPhone with the clip-on macro lens, followed by glass slides for collecting specimens to put under a microscope.  Finally, there is my Olympus TG-6 camera which I use to get some of my best photos. The image below the setup was taken with an iPhone on my fleece jacket.

Almost everyone has a smart phone with a nice camera on it these days and with that little phone you can do a lot. Add a cheap macro lens (~$15) and you can see more. You can then go up to an affordable camera that isn't as much as what the professionals use; typically a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera with macro lenses and extension tubes.  The camera I use now is a reasonable option that’s in the price range of about $350 and has some nice innovations to produce quality photos. Finally, there is a section of photos that I took through my borrowed microscope. If you have a scope, you might want to experiment with that.

iPhone

I started out photographing snow crystals with just my iPhone, then added a cheap plastic macro lens (about $15) to get a better close-up.  Actually, I was pleasantly surprised by what I could do with a very steady hand and the phone. Steadiness is key to getting a good close-up photo. I have used a little remote (Amazon $5) to shoot with the iPhone so that I would not be holding (and shaking) the camera when I took the photo.  Here’s a photo I took in Buffalo, NY on a very cold day, with the black painted plexiglass, I tinted it blue with GIMP software to get a better effect. Not bad!  

Canon G-12

I love this camera for all it can do in a nice little camera. It not only has full manual capability but it allowed me to get in pretty close for some nice snow crystal photos.  Technology has come a long way since this camera was introduced, but I still use it for all sorts of photos. Here is a look at a photo that captured some beautiful snow crystals up in Buffalo, NY.

  

Microscope

After seeing the beautiful photos from Kenneth Libbrecht on his site snowcrystals.com,  and the thousands of dollars of camera and microscope gear he used to get those photos, I was a bit intimidated, but I still wanted to find a way to do more. I was able to “borrow” a nice, old microscope from a colleague. Now, for professional photographers, this next idea may sound insane, they would use special extension tubes, connectors, filters, etc., to attach a camera to the scope. That would add up to a lot of money but also some pretty decent photographs. I opted for the cheap route. 

I used a rubber connector from a plumbing supply store ($1.68) and mounted my Canon G-12 camera on the eye-piece. Using the “self-timer” on the camera set at a 2-second delay, I was able to photograph the crystals I collected on my glass slides without shaking the camera as I took the photo. I front or back-lit the crystals with 2 small LED flashlights.  Mind you, this is all being done outside, either in my garage (unheated of course) or out on the front porch. Below is an actual photo using the microscope at 10x power and the cleaned up version after I put it into some free photo software (GIMP) and Powerpoint to clean them up and put them on nice backgrounds.

If I am working with a microscope and camera, I like to set my slides out in a shallow box to capture falling crystals, minimizing even the slightest breeze to allow the crystals to land on the smooth slides.  I also put a dark material like black felt inside the box to place the slides on, so it is easier to see the crystals that land on the clear, glass slides.  You have to very careful lifting them out, warm fingers can melt the crystals, and any movement might make the prize crystal slide off the slide.  Below is part of an extensive collection of snow crystal photographs I have made with the microscope/camera setup.  I was pretty pleased with what I have been able to do with the resources I had available.

   

 

Olympus TG-6

One of the most difficult parts of macro-photography is that when you are shooting really close to a specimen, it’s very difficult to get things in focus.  Often, a portion of the 3-dimensional snow crystal will be out of focus.  So, photographers use a method called stacking, where they take several photos of the object with tiny adjustments to the focus.  With the help of computer software it will combine these images into one, more fully-focused photo.  Sounds like a lot of work and it is, but wait!!  Olympus, the camera people have just come up with a brilliant idea. They combined that “stacking software” right into their TG-6 camera.  When I heard about that, I immediately went out and bought the camera (Olympus TG-6 $350). It was my biggest investment so far, but I think it was well worth it.  I have not been disappointed.  Below, I have posted several photos of snow crystals I have taken here in the Appalachian Mountains of far Eastern Tennessee with at TG-6 camera. 

Note how nicely focused the photos are.  That stacking technology built into the camera really has helped. I often also use the camera with a small tripod so I can get right up close to the snow crystals and also to keep the camera from shaking. Finally, I again employ the self-timer to keep my finger off the camera while the photo is being taken.

The really great part about taking photos with the TG-6 and the fleece background is that is really gives you a 3-D effect for the snow crystals. It allows then to stand up, rather than lying flat and gives an entirely new perspective to the crystals compared to the microscope photos.  

One of my favorite shots I have taken is the snow crystal suspended off the filaments of an artists brush as shown below.   

 

 

Another favorite is this photo taken with the TG-6. I was able to prop the crystal up and the photo looked right through it.

There are many other innovative ideas for taking close-up photographs like these including reversing the lens on a DSLR, and using extension tubes with those more expensive cameras. I likely will be going that route soon.  This hobby can become very addictive and very enjoyable at the same time.  I will leave you with an assortment of snow crystals photographed with my microscope, some of them are strange indeed. See if you can find even stranger ones next time you look closely at snow crystals !!

The Rime Is Sublime - Nature's Artwork Revealed

 

 

A look across the Roan Massif from Round Bald, looking out to Little and Big Hump mountains reveals the beauty of the snow and rime ice adorning the landscape. 

Wintertime is a magical season in the mountains.  In addition to a lot of snowfall, there are all sorts of other atmospheric processes that maximize their effects when you deal with elevation. One of my favorites is rime ice.

Rime ice forms when super-cooled water droplets freeze upon contact with surfaces below 32 degrees. It may sound like science fiction, but tiny water droplets, like you see in fog near the ground or up in the clouds, will actually remain in their liquid state when the temperature is several degrees below the freezing mark.  Also known as freezing fog, these droplets float along on their merry way in that sub-freezing air until they contact an object, whereupon they immediately freeze to it. 

If it’s a roadway that has not been treated with salt, especially a bridge or elevated highway, freezing fog can create very dangerous, icy conditions.  On an aircraft  that flies through a cloud of super-cooled water droplets, rime ice can quickly build up on the wings and potentially weigh down and change its aerodynamics.  In fact, rime icing on aircraft has been responsible for some catastrophic accidents. However, if you are on a walk where rime ice has occurred, whether it’s on a twig or tree or building, you may get to see some amazing sculptures. On a recent hike, I was treated to just that.

In calm or weak wind conditions, the process of riming will produce icy spikes as drops accumulate on objects.  In stronger wind conditions, the droplets impact the windward (direction from which the wind is coming) side of the objects and continue to build into awesome billowy, aerodynamic shapes and designs as shown below.  The "whitish" appearance to the formation is due to tiny air pockets in between the frozen droplets that help to scatter light waves so it appears white. I encourage you to click on the images below to get a look at the details, it's amazing! 

 

These two images above are in different locations/perspectives on Round Bald atop The Roan Massif. They are proxies for wind direction, the photo on the left has winds coming from the left side of the image and the one on the right has winds coming from the right. 

The photos above were from a trip I made up to Roan Mountain, on the North Carolina-Tennessee border, a perfect place to see these formations. The Roan Massif is one of the most beautiful and spectacular sections of the Appalachian Trail. The Trail itself climbs through the clouds to over 6,000 feet and passes through the largest stand of Catawba rhododendrons in the world. 

When I trekked up to the “The Balds” at Carvers Gap, a region of treeless meadows that extend along the ridges at 5,500-6,000 ft., that morning, I was treated to beautiful works of Nature!  Because of the lack of dense forests across The Balds, widely spaced trees, dormant fields and even rocks and boulders are open to the prevailing wind. When super-cooled clouds race across the ridges, they paint the vegetation and topography in a beautiful icing of white. 

This lone pine tree atop Round Bald looked like a nice photo opportunity on this beautiful, sunny day.  As we got up close and looked at the tremendous build-up of rime ice on a pine branch, we were in awe!

The park road up to the rhododendron gardens at Carvers Gap is closed in the winter to traffic, but its a perfect place to hike and see some of the more heavily vegetated area adorned with rime ice. In contrast to the open areas, where the evidence of "wind riming" is readily apparent, in sheltered areas the riming is more uniform.

 

Even after a few days, a walk up the park road unveiled some beautiful formations of rime ice, still stuck to the sheltered trees. 

Every season brings a new palette for Mother Nature to work her miracles. Winter can be especially fascinating, in some cases "other-worldly". From beautifully crafted snow crystals, to the rime ice we have gotten to know in this blog, winter is a great time to see what is out there. With a little effort, you too can uncover these beautiful aspects of the world we live in!

   

 

Mother Nature’s Snow Crystal Workshop

Snowflakes have to be one of the most interesting gifts of nature.  Whether you watch them fall from the sky from inside your home or get out to enjoy all of the activites that fresh snowfall has to offer, snow is one of those "other-wordly" parts of our daily lives for those who live in "snow country".  When you take the time to look closely, I mean really close to a snowflake, or more accurartely a snow crystal, what you will uncover is a whole new world of wonder.  I want to share some of the photographs I have taken of snow crystals over the past few years because they are just so beautiful.

Snowflakes have been around of course long before the dawn of man. I can imagine our early ancestors getting a close look at those flakes and wondering how in the world they were formed.   According to Kenneth Libbrecht's Snow Crystal Web Site  snowflakes first appeared in recorded history when individual snow crystals were identified and described as having that unique 6-sided symmetry.  Way back in 135 B.C., the Chinese scholar Han Yin wrote “Flowers of plants and trees are generally five-pointed, but those of snow, which are called ying, are always six-pointed.” Much later, in the 17th century, Renee Decartes gave detailed, naked-eye accounts of snow crystals but it was Johannes Kepler who provided the first scientific theories on snow crystal formation. 

Johannes Kepler gave this gift, The Six-Cornered Snowflake, to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II for New Years' back in 1611.  

As you will see below, in the 1930s Uchikiro Nakaya, a brilliant researcher, developed a classification method for snow cyrstals based on the temperature and humidity profile in the atmosphere. By the way, my snow crystal "hero" is Wilson Bentley, who lived in Jericho Vermont in the 19th century and as an amateur scientist compilied one of the most thorough snow crystal photo catalogues out there. I will write about him and my experience working with his original photo plates and logbooks in a later blog entry, but I digress.  

Stellar dendrite snow crystal, photographed on a piece of black fleece with an Olympus TG-6 camera. This is a great camera for macro-photography, with "stacking" software built in.  Focus stacking is a digital image processing technique which combines multiple images taken at different focus distances to give a resulting image with a greater depth of field than any of the individual source images.

That stellar dendrite crystal above is one of my favorite specimens I photographed in the Tennessee Appalachians in February, 2020.  The term snow “crystal” is a more accurate way to describe individual snowflakes. The snow crystals may not be any larger than 2 to 3 millimeters in size.  In fact, those big fluffy snow flakes that you may be familiar with are often made up of hundreds of individual branched snow crystals that lock together to make flakes like this quarter-sized beheamoth that crashed onto my deck one winter day.

 

Take a close look at the snow crystals below and see how they are that specific geometric shape, 6-sided, or hexagonal.  That's not a coincidence.  All snow crystals are based on the hexagonal shape. This isn’t magic either, although I would say that the way in which nature makes these beautiful, natural sculptures is in some ways so much better than plain old magic. 

Hexagonal plate (left) and embryo (right) photographed under a microscope, backlit by a LED flashlights with color filters (pieces of plastic page protectors) attached. Notice the 6-sided theme in every single crystal. 

How Do They Form

It all starts with water, a really neat substance of nature.  As you know, water is a molecule made up of 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen atoms (H₂O).  In its solid state, these water molecules lock together into the 6-sided shape we all know and love as shown in this beautiful animation below.  In this blog I am not going to get into all of the physics and chemistry associated with the complete processes that produce a snow crystal, but I will touch on some of the basic concepts.  

(courtesy Kenneth Liebreccht, snowcrystals.com)

You may all be familiar with the traditional snow crystal, that 6-armed Christmas ornament or piece of jewelry like the image below.  In reality however there are many, many different types of snow crystals and it wasn't until I started photographing them that I really began to unlock the true miracle of this atmospheric factory that produces so many varieties. There are dendrites, plates, columns, capped-columns, prisms, needles, and other even more exotic designs.  

Traditional 6-sided spatial dendrite that most people are familiar with when you mention the term snowflake. Note the amazing hexagonal symmetry that is maintained in so many designs as you move out from the center, or nucleus, of the crystal.

Snow crystals begin with a simple hexagonal prism having two basal facets, or sides, and six prism facets.  Depending on a host of conditions withint the cloud, the crystal will either grow from the basil facet or the prism facet. If the ice nuclei grow outward in the hexagonal prism, you end up with a flat plate or dendrite crystal. Evetually, legs of  the crystal then grow outward from one of the six points in the hexagonal plate, which “stick out” into the moist air just a bit more than the sides. If the crystal grows upward from the prism face, you get a hexagonal column as the crystal grows in a vertical manner as shown below.

Ukichiro Nakaya was one of the first scientists to develop a system for snow crystal formation. As a result of his research work back in the 1930s, he developed the Nakaya Diagram, which described the relationships between the humidity and temperature in the clouds and the type of snow crystal that forms. Although the physics behind snow crystal formation is exceptionally complicated, the basic ideas are shown in his chart below.  What is so fascinating about the snow crystal is that its shape and design are a direct result of the atmospheric temperature and humidity profile it falls through on its way to earth. Nakaya so eloquently described the snow crystal as "A Letter From The Sky" because you could "read" the meteorological information "written" on the snow crystal.  

Observing These Sculptures of Nature

Living in Buffalo, NY I didn't have to look far for snow.  Even as a kid catching snow crystals on my tongue, they intrigued me.  I really discovered their intricate beauty with the help of my Black Labrador Retriever, Smoky.  I remember looking at snow crystals falling onto his fur one snowy day. His fur was fully insulated from his body warmth so the snow crystals did not melt.  That black fur served as the perfect background to look closely at the snow crystals and what I saw opened a whole new world for me. 

Snow crystals on a fleece jacket. This photo was taken with a plain old iPhone 5, in a future bolg I will show you how to get started photographing your own snow crystals.

Through my research work, I eventually obtained an old microscope, and with my little Canon G6 Point&Shoot camera and a couple dollars of plumbing parts to attach the camera to the eyepiece on the scope, I began to see what so many other scientists have discovered. With lots of experimentation I started finding success in documenting these amazing shapes.  In anticipation of a snow event, I couldn't contain my excitement when I started capturing the specimens and putting the glass slides under the microscope. More recently, with the improvement in macro-photography cameras like the Olympus TG-6, I was able to capture my photographs without the use of the microscope. In this section of my snow crystal blog, I will share some of those images below. Just click on each one to get an enlarged view and take the time to look at the details, its hard to believe they come naturally form the sky!

 

These crystal photographs are taken with the old microscope and Canon G-6 camera. They are post-processed to put them on nice backgrounds.  The details that you can see in each crystal are truly amazing!

Spatial dendrite photos taken directly with my Olympus TG-6 camera. With this camera, you can get a much better look at the crystals in 3-D.  The crystal on the left is attached to the hairs of an artist's paint brush. The threads in the background of the other images are the black fleece that I use to collect my specimens. 

  

These snow crystals all have a few things in common. Each one of them is covered with all of those little frozen droplets. In one of my next blog entries I talk about how this process works. Stay tuned... 

I plan to author a few more blog entries on snow crystals soon. They will include all of my instructions on how to get started photographing snow crystals, a nod to my snow crystal hero, Wilson Bentley, whom I consider the "Father of Snow Crystal Photography", and finally and extensive gallery of some of the hundreds of snow crystals I have photographed, and there are a few that are really "other-worldly.  Stay tuned for that and much more!!