The Record For World's Largest Snowflake Might Not Count
Short Wave
English - January 08, 2024 08:00 - 11 minutes - 10.1 MB - ★★★★★ - 5.7K ratingsLife Sciences Science Astronomy Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
A winter storm brought heavy rain and snow to parts of the East Coast this weekend, which got us thinking about snowflakes. Those intricate, whimsical crystals are a staple of magical wintry scenes, but how big can they really get? Well, according to the Guinness World Record keepers, the "largest snowflake" ever recorded was a whopping 15 inches in diameter. It was spotted near Missoula, Montana in 1887. But Kenneth Libbrecht, a physicist at Caltech, has long been skeptical of that record. So he set out to find what makes a snowflake a snowflake and whether that 1887 record is scientifically possible. You can read more about what he discovered here.
Want to share the snowflakes you've spotted this winter? Email us a photo at [email protected].
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