P4 6 Let it slow: The Terminal Velocities of Snowfall

Abstract

In this paper we modelled the falling of snow respective to two different structure models of the
snowflakes themselves. We model the terminal velocities of snowflakes of different density in a
solid spherical mass model and compare the values to the terminal velocity of a normalised, D = 1
mm and ρs = 30 kgm3, fractal flake. We determine that the fractal nature of snowflakes plays
a strong role in suppressing the size dependence of terminal velocity, with max values of ≈ 0.64
ms−1 compared to solid model max values of ≈ 1.4 ms−1