Snow Wonder

Thursday 9th February 2012
Not a good day for solar generation.

Snow Wonder
Today I noticed something utterly amazing for the first time. It wasn't anything I didn't already know. In fact, it's something I used to teach children all the time. We even used to fold up paper specially, cut it into pretty patterns and hang these all over the place at Christmas time - or maybe even in the summer if my maths teaching was feeling particularly inspirational.


Oh for a macro lens.
Look carefully and you'll spot some perfect snowflakes.



Today I noticed a snowflake. To be more precise, I noticed the hexagonalness of a snow flake. How on earth had I managed never to notice this before, in over 45 years? In my excitement I showed Sue. She had never noticed it before either! Is there something wrong with the pair of us? Don't tell me everybody else has noticed this already!

Had I had a better camera at my disposal, I could show you an array of amazing photos of a hexagonal nature. As it is, you'll have to look closely at this piccie. The zoom wouldn't work on the phonecam and if I went closer it went out of focus.

I would never have noticed this had I not been diligently scrubbing, washing and disinfecting my seed trays outside, plodding through the job doggedly in the face of ever heavier snow flurries, ever more bitter cold air, and ever number thumbs (which stung to buggeroony when I ran them under warm water later on).

The seed trays after the first scrub.

This job got cold when it started to snow!

I stopped a while to observe. How had I never noticed this before?

Well, when I was young I was too excited by snow to take in such fine detail. Secondly, snow so often seems to come in the dark, so by morning it's all a heap of flakes, their individual beauty hidden in the mass. Then, as I've got older, snow has become a signal to retreat indoors and snuggle in front of the fire.

As my sense of awe and fascination captured me today, I observed closer than I had ever done before. Many flakes crash-landed and broke up on impact. Yet others folded into more of an inverted umbrella shape and lost their form.

But some, just a few, got through.

Perfectly symmetrical, intricately patterned hexagonal discs.

  



And as darkness fell, so did the proper snow.