Our caroling snowman porcelain figurines are 5 inches tall and 5.5 inches across. The snowman porcelain figurines consist of 4 caroling snowmen. The first snowman is wearing a blue and tan stocking cap with a red bird sitting on top, a green and dark brown striped scarf and 3 brown buttons and is playing a violin. The next snowman is wearing brown ear muffs, a light blue scarf with tan dots and green tassels and three green buttons. He has a gold star on his side and is holding a small red and white candy cane. The next snowman is wearing a deep plum top hat with a holly sprig decoration and a red bird sitting on the top, a red and gold striped scarf and two gold buttons and is holding a green hymn book. The last snowman is wearing a brown, tan and gold striped stocking hat, blue red and tan plaid scarf, four brown buttons and has an orange heart on his side and is holding a lantern with a candle inside. The caroling snowmen are standing on an iridescent blanket of snow.
Select this link to view our snowman Christmas figurine.
How Snow Forms.
Snow crystals usually start from tiny droplets of super cooled water. Water droplets do not always freeze at the normal freezing temperature of water, 32 degrees F. Droplets of super cooled water remain liquid even though their temperature is below the freezing point.
At the beginning of the process of snow formation, some super cooled droplets freeze. They do so because they contain or come into contact with tiny particles called freezing nuclei or ice nuclei. Most freezing nuclei are dust or specks of plant debris raised by the wind.
Nearby, water droplets, which are still super cooled, slowly evaporate. Much of the resulting vapor joins the crystals and so the crystals grow.
The crystals fall faster and faster as they grow. They may collide with one another to make snowflakes. Snow particles fall at rates ranging from nearly zero for tiny crystals to about 3 feet per second for a typical snowflake and several times that for melting snow. Snow crystals often strike super cooled droplets, which immediately freeze onto them. This process, called riming, forms soft particles known as snow pellets or graupel. In temperate zones, the melting of snow pellets provides much of the rainfall from cumulus clouds.
Nearly all snow crystals have six sides, but they vary in shape. The crystals are six sided because the water molecules within them link together in six sided structures. Planar or flat crystals called plates range from simple hexagons to six pointed stars to the familiar finely branched dendrites. Dendrites form at a temperature of about 5 degrees F, six sided columns form at about 14 degrees F. Many columnar crystals are hollow.
Individual snowfalls usually contain many different types and combinations of crystals. Snow crystals that encounter a variety of temperatures and humidity’s as they grow may become partly planar and partly columnar. They may or may not undergo riming or clumping.
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What is Snow?
Snow is a form of precipitation that consists of crystals of ice. These crystals, called snow crystals, grow from water vapor in clouds. Water vapor is the gaseous form of water, the form that water assumes when it evaporates. A snowflake consists of up to 100 snow crystals clumped together.
Particles of snow vary in size from crystals almost too small to see with the unaided eye to snowflakes 1 inch or more in diameter. Some of the tiniest crystals occur in ice fog, a fog that can form in the Arctic regions when the temperature is extremely low.
Select this link to view our snowman Christmas ornament.