The Perfect Snowflake

I had the smallest and neatest experience Friday. It was snowing (for the third time this month!) and I stuck my head out the door to see if it was sticking (it wasn't). I noticed that there seemed to be a nice variation of snowflake sizes, and they were falling at a nice pace right outside the door. So, I decided to stick my hand out to see if I could catch a snowflake (I didn't have my jacket on). Well, just sticking my hand out didn't quite do it, so I stuck my whole arm out. And caught a couple of snowflakes in my hand right away! And they as quickly melted. But it was chilly, so I brought my arm back inside. And noticed a few snowflakes on my black sleeve. And did a double-take, because one of them seemed to have more substance than the others. I took a closer look and it looked like someone had tossed a cake decoration star at me. It was a perfect star with a perfect circle cut out of the middle. I really didn't believe that it was a snowflake. It looked fake. It had substance. It was too perfect. Snowflakes are just random flops of frozen fluff to the eye. It just had to be fake. But then what the heck was it? So, I carefully scooped it up with my fingernail and put it on my finger to take a closer look. It was almost 2 millimeters across. It was equally thick all the way through. It was compressed. It almost felt like ice, but it wasn't quite that dense. It was definitely snow. It looked like someone had taken a log of stars, cut off a slice and tossed it out the window at me. And then it melted.

I'd never seen an actual shaped snowflake before. It was just amazing. I stood there and gaped for a while after. It was just too cool. So to speak. I wish I could have taken a picture of it. I think I'm going to be looking at snow a little more closely from now on.