Snowflakes that look like small, alien devices

Twisted Sifter presents a gallery of snowflakes taken under high magnification and some with an electron microscope. Looking at them, you can imagine them being machined in a factory rather than occurring naturally in the trillions each winter. Included are images of all of the OGRS crystal forms;  flakes, columns, plates, needles, rime, graupel (my favourite snow crystal) and rounds.

Also fascinating is the story of how they get the snow samples from the field to the lab.