The grey clouds above me litter the landscape with white chaff, falling in family clumps to form a white duvet over the sleepy landscape. While the exquisite beauty of snow is most obvious in the small crystals that fit the popular concept of a snowflake, giant flakes have their own charm as they spiral and slowly flutter downward.
Most people call almost any frozen form of precipitation, other than hail or sleet, a snowflake.
But atmospheric scientists are a bit more fussy. Technically, they reserve the term snowflake for an assemblage of individual snow crystals. Snowflakes form from crystals that have collided and remained fastened together during their fall to earth. Snowflakes form when air temperatures near the earth's surface are not far from the freezing mark. Snow crystals adhere to each other better at in this temperature range.