The Secret of Snow: How Nature Protects Plants and Reveals Hidden Design

Snow holds a great blessing for the world, for when the world is cold at a temperature of minus eight degrees, all the sprouts buried in the ground may freeze to death and the crop will cause irreversible damage

How is the problem overcome? Let us imagine that a scientist proposes a “simple” solution: to spread a thick carpet, filled with trapped air, over the entire ground in a cold region. This carpet would create insulation, separating the low air temperature of minus eight degrees from the ground temperature of zero degrees, thereby protecting the seeds and delicate sprouts.

This solution would be impossible for us to implement across vast areas, but not for the Almighty.

How Snow Is Formed

The creator caused the moisture in the air to gather in the upper layers. When the air becomes saturated with water vapor, like a sponge filled with water, the vapor freezes at a certain temperature and attaches itself to tiny dust particles in the air.

Those dust particles had already been lifted from the ground by the wind. In this way, tiny ice crystals are formed. As they descend, they join together and create the flakes we call snow. Billions upon billions of these flakes fall, one beside the other and one upon the other, forming a beautiful white blanket filled with air.

Snow as Nature’s Protective Blanket

This blanket protects the plants. While the temperature above it may be minus eight degrees, the temperature of the soil beneath it does not drop below zero. In this way, the seeds and sprouts are preserved as if under a soft and gentle cover.

A Natural Water Storage System

Snow provides another remarkable benefit. In times or places where rainwater might otherwise be lost before it can be collected, or where reservoirs fill quickly but empty just as fast, piles of snow and ice serve as natural storage for frozen water until they melt in the spring.

Perfect Symmetry in Every Snowflake

Because the Creator is all powerful, He also determined that the ice crystals forming snowflakes would always join together in beautiful, symmetrical patterns. And so that human beings, limited in their physical perception, could grasp even a small part of the greatness of the Creator, it was decreed that among all the billions of snowflakes that fall in a single day, and among the countless flakes that have ever fallen or will fall, no two are exactly alike.

The human mind cannot fully comprehend either the formation of such perfect symmetry or the fact that it occurs endlessly, each time in a different form.

Why Snowflakes Have Six Sides

Snowflakes are also formed with six sides. Perhaps because, according to Kabbalistic thought, the number six represents the physical world.

Every physical object has six directions: north, south, east, west, above, and below. In contrast, the number seven represents what transcends the physical. This is why the Torah contains many patterns of seven in spiritual matters.

The Meaning of Six and Seven

The six days of creation are followed by the seventh day, Shabbat. Similarly, the land is worked for six years, and in the seventh year it rests. The Jubilee year comes after seven cycles of seven years. The counting of the Omer lasts seven weeks. The festivals of Passover and Sukkot each last seven days. The days of wedding celebration are seven, and the days of mourning are also seven. The Temple menorah had seven branches, six on the sides and one central branch.

Thus, the number six represents the material world with its six directions, while the number seven represents the spiritual dimension within it. What could be more fitting than snow, which transforms from vapor into solid matter, should take shape with six sides?

“He scatters frost like ashes; He sends forth His word and melts them; His wind blows, and the waters flow.”