The delicate snow flurries that you watch fall from your window, shovel off your sidewalk, and curse when they turn into slush puddles, have quite a long adventure before they make it to the ground. A snowflake begins its descent to the tip of your nose or the top of your car from thousands of feet above the Earth. Its journey starts when ice forms around a speck of dust and gets blown by winds through the clouds, where its crystals then bloom into tiny ice stars.