We don’t give snow enough credit. It’s not just cold, wet, white stuff falling out of a cloud, and it’s far more than a convenient play surface. Snow is more complicated than that.

Snow and snowflakes have fascinated both artists and scientists for thousands of years. From a 135 BCE writing contrasting of the shape of flowers to the shape of snow, to astronauts synthesizing snow crystals while in orbit on the Space Shuttle, it seems that snow has always been the subject of conversation and study.

Snow has a life cycle. Under the right atmospheric conditions, ice crystals form, their size increases, they precipitate and accumulate on surfaces, then in time, melt away. However, some snow crystals sublimate, turning from a solid to a gas without first becoming liquid; a kind of here-it-is-here-it-isn’t phenomenon.

Scientists study snow because of its affect on human activities. Anyone who’s ever wintered in the Sierra understands the troubles that a heavy snowfall can cause. Because of scientific findings about snow, engineers have been able to adapt transportation and structures to it, and agronomists can better estimate the availability of snowmelt for crops.

The notion that no two snowflakes are alike was first published in an article written by Wilson Alwyn Bentley. Mr. Bentley, born on a Vermont farm in 1865, became obsessed with snowflakes when he was a teenager. Given an old microscope as a present from his mother on his 15th birthday, Bentley caught snowflakes on a piece of black velvet, then tried to draw what he saw through the microscope. But, even in Vermont’s subzero temperatures, the complex snowflakes melted or sublimated too rapidly.

The teen then experimented with a bellows camera attached to the microscope and was able to photograph his first snowflake on January 15, 1885. Standing in the winter cold for hours at a time, he’d catch a falling flake. Using a feather, he placed the flake under the microscope lens which was set up outside. Exposure took a long minute and a half, but he would capture the image he was after.

Snowflake Bentley, as he came to be called, took more than 5,000 pictures of snowflake crystals in his lifetime. The Buffalo Museum of Science digitalized some of his photographs, which appear on their website.

Wilson Bentley’s book Snow Crystals, published shortly before his death in 1931, is still in print today, and his lifelong Vermont home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Love it or hate it, snow is a fact. It’s been with us forever, and with any luck will stick around for a long time. So, as happens, snow, its flakes, its falls or lack thereof, always has been, and will be, a hot topic of conversation (pun definitely intended).