Biggest snowflake ever reported was the size of a large pizza
Topics: Weather, Science, Guinness World Records
Gerrard Kaonga
Featured Image Credit: Raycat/Siegfried/Getty Images
Topics: Weather, Science, Guinness World Records
A massive snowflake isn’t just an insult, there was actually a record-breaking snowflake ever and it happened to be the size of a large pizza.
The Guiness Book of Records, as the name would imply, keeps a record of just about every odd and wonderful thing that we have recorded in world history.
Peculiar weather phenomenons are no different, and the actual proportions of the biggest snowflake are quite impressive.
Advert
The snowflake was discovered by Matt Coleman in 1887 on the night of January 27 during a fierce winter storm, according to the record.
“[It] dropped snowflakes described as ‘larger than milk pans’ over the Clark Fork River valley, in the vicinity of a ranch owned by Matt Coleman, near Missoula in Montana, USA,” the record reads.
“Reports suggest that they were up to 1 ft 3 in (38 cm) wide and 8 in (20 cm) thick.
“Snowflakes are conglomerations of smaller snow crystals that clump together. The largest individual snow crystal measured was 10 mm (0.39 in) from tip to tip, as documented by Professor Kenneth Libbrecht (USA) in Cochrane, Ontario, Canada, on 30 December 2003.”
But let’s back up a little bit, because while most of us know a slew of things about how to be adults, you would be forgiven for forgetting some weather facts.
“A snowflake begins to form when an extremely cold water droplet freezes onto a pollen or dust particle in the sky,” according to an explanation by the National Oceanic and Admospheric Administration (NOAA).
“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."
And it's likely you have heard the phrase ‘as unique as a snowflake’ or something to that likeness, and there is a reason for that.
“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, NOAA explained.
Professor of Physics at Caltech Dr Kenneth Libbrecht, who has studied snow crystals throughout his career spoke to IFL Science and joked it was embarrassing we don’t know more details about why they are unique.
“That was a puzzle it just seemed like somebody should solve,” he said.
“That’s an embarrassment to the scientific community that we don’t know how that works. I mean, this stuff falls out of the sky.”