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!

A few more snowflakes from recent days (January, 2015)... click the images for much larger files on flickr.

Note - to keep from cluttering the blog here, I am just adding new images as I take and process them. So stop back to see new stuff!

-- Mark C.

Added January 27, 2015:

Added January 15, 2015:

Added January 13, 2015:

Added January 9, 2015

At long last a snow that produced some intact crystals... Here are two from this afternoon, January 6, 2015 (click on the images for much larger files.)

Hopefully, more will be coming! Mark C.

 

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/

This winter is turning out to be disappointing. We've had day after day of warm temperature, often barely dropping below freezing even in the evenings. What little snow we have gotten has been sloppy an d mixed with rain.

Last weekend we finally had a hard snow and a true blast of cold weather. While the detached garage in which I take these snow crystal photos had cooled down a bit, it still took till the next morning to finally drop below freezing inside the structure - even though it was well below freezing outside.

And so on Saturday morning I set up the camera and managed to get one, just one, snow crystal photo. The snow stopped just as I set up the rig and prepared to start photographing. Here's the one photo I did get - click for larger version.

And here we are - another warm day and rain on the way. Maybe more crystals will come soon...

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.) 

This December has proven to be pretty cold - I noticed folks ice fishing in the last few day s- but aside from a little snow at the start of the month, it's been pretty dry. Here are a few more snow crystals from the second good snow of December . As this month winds into the holidays and then to an end, no snow is in the forecast. Hoping for a productive 2011!

As always - click on an image 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.