The Columnist Manifesto

Snowflakes. That's right. Did you know that no two were alike?



After an early freeze, the lakes in our home town thawed and were got several weeks of crummy, late-winter/early spring weather, with cold rains and temperatures in the low 40s, even on occasion higher. It seemed to confirm the dire reports from those British scientists that this is the hottest year in the history of the earth.

Without questioning in any way the warnings about global warming, I'm happy to say that here, at least, we've been getting some real winter for the past week. And walking around my neighborhood yesterday, people seemed particularly cheerful, if not giddy. This is a liberal town, and it's possible that there's widespread depression and anxiety about global warming, but it's also depressing to think you'll have 3-4 months of March weather. And yesterday's 6-8 inch snowfall had to be cheering in itself.

There were even two people running around taking pictures of snowflakes. I happen to have been one of them.

The thing is, I've never seen snowflakes like these. I've seen big, fat, fluffly flakes, but these snowflakes were not just big. You could actually see their crystaline structure, without any sort of magnifying lens, at the same distance that you might look at your watch.





It was quite incredible. Usually, snow looks like powdered sugar coming down, and then like massed sheets or piles of white once it's landed. But these flakes were singular. There they were, gathering on your sleeve or glove, or in your hair, or on your companion's nose, looking like tiny doilies or white-paper cutouts. And not that tiny either -- perhaps 1/8 to 1/4 inch across. And once they'd accumulated, they looked like a crowd of individuals.





Actually, I've always wondered how they know for sure that "no two are alike." How do they know that the first twin snowflake won't fall tomorrow -- if it hasn't already?