FLAKE REPORT: “Although we tend to think of snowflakes as the
typical stylized six-pointed stars, the International Commission on
Snow and Ice has several categories of flakes, each formed under a
different set of conditions. Low, wet storms with little wind form
three-dimensional, tree-shaped flakes, for example, while colder,
drier clouds give birth to needle formations. But each flake is a
unique product of temperature and humidity, a natural fingerprint
of atmospheric conditions.”

So writes Jeff Rennicke in a copyrighted article from Backpacker
magazine reprinted in 1990 by Readers Digest.

One of our readers dropped it off after our columns about the
different types of snow.

The article continues: “One question about snowflakes lingers.
Is it true that no two are exactly alike? The numbers seem stacked
against it. To cover 2 feet of meadow with 10 inches of snow can
require over a million flakes in a single snowstorm. That each
flake could be unique and unduplicated seems unlikely.”

“Yet it has been estimated that there are at least a million
different temperature and humidity levels possible in the
atmosphere, creating 10 to the 5-millionth power of possible
combinations. For two snowflakes to be exactly alike, each would
have to grow on precisely the same core configurations, fall
through the same sequence of conditions for the same amount of
time, and have similar collisions on the way down. Then the two
flakes would have to be collected by the same scientist for
verification.

“The perception of a snowflake’s uniqueness is likely to
continue. Part of the reason lies in a belief all of us want to
hold: that nature is so abundant, it can toss these jewels down
from the skies in uncountable numbers, and yet is so creative it
can make each of them different.

“A snowflake is a symbol for the eternal side of nature. It
falls, drifts and melts, only to rise again in a forever-changing
form.

“Wilson Bentley, it’s said, envisioned a snowflake as ‘an idea
dropped form the sky, a bit of beauty incomparable, that if lost at
that moment is lost forever to the world.’ It may be the chance to
glimpse both the fleeting and the eternal in something as small as
a snowflake that keeps us fascinated and that kept Wilson Bentley
shivering alone in the cold all those years.”