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Snow has arrived in Southcentral Alaska, offering a blanket of light to counter the creep of diminishing daylight. Love it or hate it, there are ways to make the most of snow for either the Heat Miser or the Snow Miser in all of us. Here are four family-friendly activities for intrepid cold-weather observers and couch-loving, fireside wannabe scientists alike.
If you've ever seen a sun dog -- a halo around the sun -- on a particularly cold, clear day, you've caught a glimpse of diamond dust, a thin, glittering fog-like optical phenomenon generated by ice crystals. Snowflakes, just like diamond dust, are also ice crystals. And they have a lot to tell us about the world we live in.
In an interview for FrontierScientists.com, Matthew Sturm, a professor with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, calls snow an "unbelievably beautiful substance that does very strange things." If you take a moment to see the dynamic quality of snow through Sturm's eyes, snow might just start to enchant you, too.