Thundersnow, Giant Snowflakes, and Desert Blizzards: Winter's Wildest Secrets

Winter is more than just cold weather and cozy sweaters. It’s a season of bizarre and awe-inspiring phenomena, where the rules we think we know about nature get beautifully broken. What if you were told that nearly 32 inches of snow once fell on the world's driest desert, or that giant, 3-foot snowballs can form all by themselves?

Snow often appears where you'd least expect it. In 2011, a rare cold front from Antarctica blanketed Chile’s Atacama Desert—the driest place on Earth—with an astonishing 32 inches of snow. Snowfall has also been recorded everywhere from the Sahara Desert to Hawaii, proving that winter’s reach is far greater than we assume.

The size of snowflakes can be equally mind-boggling. While most are dime-sized, witnesses to a snowstorm in Fort Keogh, Montana, in 1887 claimed to see crystals 15 inches wide fall from the sky. More recently, in 2016, a beach in Siberia became home to hundreds of mysterious, naturally formed snowballs. These icy spheres, shaped by wind and water, grew up to nearly 3 feet in diameter.

Sometimes, the sky rumbles during a blizzard. This rare phenomenon, known as 'thundersnow,' is most common near a large lake. It occurs when columns of warmer air rise into colder cloud layers, creating atmospheric instability. But you could miss it happening right over your head; the thick snowfall often dampens the sound of thunder, making it an eerie, muffled roar.

One of the most common winter myths is that it's cold because Earth is farther from the sun. In reality, the opposite is true. Every January, during the Northern Hemisphere's winter, Earth reaches perihelion, the point in its orbit where it’s closest to the sun. The seasons are a result of the planet's axial tilt, not its distance from our star.

Ultimately, winter reveals the dynamic, and sometimes strange, physics of our world hiding in plain sight.