Where does snow come from and why is it white?
Snow's Secret Journey
Where does snow come from and why is it white?
Look up on a cold winter day and there they are: a million tiny white flakes drifting down like the sky is shaking out a feather pillow. Snow feels like magic. But it isn't magic at all — it's just water playing one of its coolest tricks. Let's follow a single flake all the way back to where it began.
Our story starts not in the sky, but in a puddle, a lake, an ocean — any old water sitting around in the sunshine. The sun warms that water until the tiniest bits of it sneak away as invisible vapor and float upward. You can't see them go, but they're rising all the time. That's the very first ingredient of snow: water that's gone for a walk into the sky.
