For the past two winters, a high-speed camera system has photographed snowflakes in 3-D (above, enlarge by clicking here) as they fall – completely untouched by any device, as they exist naturally in the air, Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences, told Phys.org.
NASA and the U.S. Army helped fund the camera's development while the National Science Foundation funded the observations -- with the goal, Garrett says, to improve computer simulations of falling snow and how it interacts with radar.
That should help improve the use of radar for weather and snowpack forecasting, according to Phys.org, and reveal more about how snowy weather can degrade microwave (radar) communications.
Photo courtesy of Tim Garrett, University of Utah
