The Ultrastructure of Snow

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Snow-0306.mp3

March 6, 2013

News flash: it’s snowing. But how much water is in that snow?

Retired U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher Eric Erbe knows. When he was at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center here in Maryland, he made a breakthrough in calculating the amount of water that can be released by different kinds of snow cover. He did it with an electron microscope, frozen to more than 150 degrees centigrade below zero. And along the way, he got some of the most amazing photographs ever taken of snowflakes.

Tom Hall calls him live at his new home out near Davis, West Virginia.

We're posting a few of these majestic images, but you can see many more here. All images credit: USDA Microscopy Unit, Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Eric Erbe and Bill Wergin