How Snow Is Made Naturally and by Humans

Every skier knows that natural snow is better than man-made snow. But there will be plenty of both at the Winter Olympics. So what is the difference? And how is snow made? Those questions are answered in the following videos.

How to Make Snow (If You're Not Elsa) is a short video produced by SciShow that explains how snow is made at ski resorts by using cooled water and compressed air.


Reactions, a YouTube channel that produces lots of science videos, has a short video that explains how snowflakes are naturally created.


The National Science Foundation has a neat video that explains how high speed cameras capture images of snowflakes forming. The video then goes on to explain why some snow is light and fluffy while other snow feels wet and heavy. (Jump to the 4:25 mark to get to the section about the formation of snowflakes).

40 Years of Snow Data

The Snow Guardian is an interesting short film featured on National Geographic's YouTube channel. The film features billy barr (he chooses not to capitalize his name) who has lived alone on Gothic Mountain in Colorado for more than 40 years. For all but one of those years he has kept detailed, daily records of the snow pack. That data is now used by scientists studying climate change. The video is fascinating. Watch The Snow Guardian as embedded below.


Applications for Education
Besides the record keeping aspect of this story, your students may have a lot of questions about how billy barr has managed to maintain his solitary lifestyle in the mountains for more than forty years. I certainly had a lot of questions about that so I went and did a little searching on the web for answers. I found this excellent article from The Atlantic that answered most of my questions.

The Science of Snow

Good morning from Woodstock, Maine where we have roughly ten inches of new snow on the ground. The fresh snow combined with the approaching full moon reminded me of a couple of neat videos about snow and the moon.

The episode of Bytesize Science embedded below explains how snowflakes are created.


One of my favorite things about the combination of fresh snow and a full moon is that it is so bright at night that I don't have to wear a headlamp to see my dogs in the yard at night. In the following Minute Physics video we learn why the full moon appears brighter in the winter.