What are ice crystals?

Ice crystals are tiny snowflakes made of frozen water, like how a glass of water turns into ice when it gets cold.

Imagine you have a glass of water, and you put it in the freezer. After some time, the water changes from liquid to solid, that’s ice! Now, imagine instead of just making one big piece of ice, the water makes lots of tiny ice crystals, like little stars or diamonds.

When warm air meets cold air up high in the sky, water droplets can freeze. These frozen droplets form ice crystals, they’re like the tiny building blocks that make up snowflakes. Each crystal is super small, but when you have millions of them together, they look like snow.

Each ice crystal has a unique shape because of how it freezes. Some are flat and six-pointed, others are long and needle-like. This is why no two snowflakes are exactly the same, they're all made from different ice crystals that grew in their own special way!