A few copies of the simplified Chinese Edition of The Story of Snow arrived at my house a few days ago - here's what it looks like:


The Story of Snow was originally published over 6 years ago (October, 2009) - so it's great to see continued developments even now. It of course remains in print in English and available at places like Amazon. -- Mark

I recently put together a new collection of 100 snowflake photos. The gallery ranges from some of the first photos I made (on film) in 1999 through photos made in early 2015. If you are interested in seeing more snowflake photos, follow this link: 100 Snowflake Photos (or click the snowflake photo below). Enjoy!

 

In the last few weeks, the winter of 2012/13 has been pretty good for snow crystal photos. Below is one sample, and you can see a full set of this season's photos on my flickr account -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markcassino/8456495579/in/set-72157632724561546/lightbox/

The Story of Snow has received the 2013 Louis J. Battan Award from the American Meteorological Society.

From the society's website:

The Louis J. Battan Author's Award - K-12

The Louis J. Battan Author's Award - K-12 is presented to the author(s) of outstanding, newly published learning materials or books that foster the understanding of atmospheric and related sciences in K-12 audiences. Nominations are considered by a committee of the Education and Human Resources Commission, which makes recommendations for final approval by AMS Council.

This is a great honor and Jon and I are both thrilled with this award!

From the AMS website:

http://www.ametsoc.org/awards/2013awardrecipients.pdf

On Saturday, December 10, the Kalamazoo Nature Center will host the 2011 Buy Local Art & Gift Fair. Lots of artists this year and a really fun event. I will be on hand to sign copies of The Story of Snow from 1-3 PM. For more details, click here.

If you are in the area, stop by!

We had a blizzard last night. (By 'we' I mean the mid section of the continental United States. ) Here in Michigan it started in the early evening, quickly accelerated, and lingered on till around noon today. At least a foot of snow fell overnight and in the morning. I reckon more like 16 inches.

Blizzards and other major snow events usually are not conducive to taking snow crystal photos. At least that has been my experience.  The snow crystals are usually  broken, battered or clumped together. A blizzard is particularly rough on the crystals, since by definition a blizzard has damaging high winds.

I ventured out a few times last night to watch the snow flying in the night, in the howling storm. As expected, any perfect crystals had been destroyed.

But this morning I managed to find a few intact crystals that fell from the sky, and took their photos with a crimson light.

Here are three snaps from this morning. As you see - they are worn and weathered, irregular (though whole) and they show arches and curves in their structure, which I find to be unusual:

(As always, click on the images for a larger view.) 

Hard to believe that one week ago today it was a balmy 53 degrees and warm gentle breezes were pushing the last fall leaves around on the sidewalks. The temperatures have dropped, the lake effect snow has begun, and here we are on December 6, with the first snow crystal shots of 2010/11. They aren't particularly interesting, but they hold the promise for more to come.

The Story of Snow  has been nominated as a finalist in the has for the 2011 AAAS /Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Excellence in Science Books.(AAAS stands for American Association for the Advancement of Science.) Nice to learn about this on the fall weekend when I cleaned out my garage to prepare for another season of snow crystal photography.

Read more and see the other fianlists at http://www.sbfonline.com/Subaru/Pages/Finalists2011.aspx .