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03/04/2008: "Taking Away All The Fun ..."

Life these days is pretty stressful. Elections, war, poverty, famine, disease, steroids ... thank God there are still the simple pleasures of life to get you through the day. Things like catching a snowflake on the tip of your tongue ... or not.

Turns that flake may not be as pure as you think, as the nucleator, or seed around which the water formed, is most likely a bacteria ...

"Bacteria are by far the most active ice nuclei in nature," said Brent C. Christner, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Louisiana State University.

Christner and colleagues sampled snow from Antarctica, France, Montana and the Yukon and they report their findings in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

In some samples as much as 85 percent of the nuclei were bacteria, Christner said in a telephone interview. The bacteria was most common in France, followed by Montana and the Yukon, and was even present to a lesser degree in Antarctica.

The most common bacteria found was Pseudomonas syringae, which can cause disease in several types of plants including tomatoes and beans.

In an interesting twist, killed bacteria are actually being used by some ski resorts to increase the effectiveness of their snowblowing equipment.

It's enough to make you think that yellow snow might not be yellow for the reason you always thought ...