Makes me think of an old plaything of mine, but zoomed in: http://mackerron.com/snow-mo (hint: click and drag).

Those interested in physics-based simulation of snowflake growth should have a look at this page [1] with papers describing models to do so, in particular part II describes a two-dimensional model, part III a three-dimensional model. There also many rendered images and a couple of videos of the simulation results and even some code.

A lot of information can also be found on Kenneth G. Libbrecht's snowcrystals.com [2] including many snowflake photographs. Also the photographs of Alexey Kljatov [3] are quite well known.

[1] http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/Snowfakes.htm

[2] http://snowcrystals.com

[3] https://alexey-kljatov.pixels.com

Of all the stories posted today on HN, this is the only one I had any desire to click on.

Was more interesting than I expected too.

Thanks for posting.

Very cool ^_^