The NASA HOW (History of Winter) program is held each February (since 2000) in Lake Placid, New York, USA. The HOW Program brings together teachers and learning professionals from around the United States to study SNOW, ICE and the WINTER ECOSYSTEM through intensive classroom and fieldwork exercises led by experts in the field. This year the program is held February 10-16. Also this year, The Global Snowflake Network (GSN) will be launched.

Peter Wasilewski and Robert Gabrys created and developed the NASA HOW (History of Winter) program held each February since 2000. The primary foci of the weeklong program (February 10 - 16, 2008) are threefold:

1) SNOW - in the air and on the ground
2) ICE - crystal structure and axial orientation
3) WINTER ECOSYSTEM – interaction of the cryosphere and the greater environment

The concept of HOW (History of Winter) within NASA is to provide understanding of the WHY, WHAT and HOW of satellite remote sensing. The ultimate goal is to provide educators with ground validation techniques that are identical to those used by professionals who study snow pits, evaluate features in snow metamorphism, and study thin sections of ice cores drilled in ice caps and glaciers. The HOW: Teacher As Scientist (TAS) model is a flexible model. HOW enables teachers who are required to use inquiry-based facilitation in the classroom to experience inquiry themselves. Teachers with little science content background as well as those with science degrees have participated in HOW working alongside the expert science team. Accommodations are made through differentiation of instruction so that each group leaves with a mastery of the content that is appropriate for the transition to presentation in the classroom. Each year builds on the previous year ensuring a time series record of the History of Winter - by itself a learning experience.

HOW is supported by a vast array of multimedia web resources which provide participants with exhaustive detail on the content and procedures necessary to carry what they’ve learned back to the classroom. The development of online HOW resources is guided by this principle and is focused toward facilitating the expansion of the HOW workshop to other locations. It is the project’s intent to foster the growth of a HOW program in each of the “snow biome” regions as identified by Sturm and Liston.

The 2008 HOW program will include a team from Arctic Alaska, with Inupiaq participants and educators from Ilisagvik College (Barrow) who are involved in the "Growing Teachers for the Arctic" program. There will also be a “Composite Team” from urban areas of Alaska including University faculty involved in teacher training as well as teacher/mentors who can readily and capably share their experience with fellow educators to maximize dissemination of the science learned and strategies absorbed. Additionally, representatives from Bay Mills Community College (Michigan's only fully accredited Tribal College) are a part of HOW 2008.

Last year at HOW 2007, as part of the launch of the Indigenous IPY, the HOW program provided Thermochrons and Global Snowflake collection techniques to the expeditions FINNMARK2007 and POLAR Husky GoNorth 2007. This was an inaugural field demonstration of the capabilities of continuous Thermochron monitoring of expedition temperature - demonstrating how otherwise inaccessible snowflake information of vital interest to NASA and others interested in the Polar region snow could be effectively and efficiently acquired. In addition, reindeer herder and Ph.D. student Inger Marie G. Eira was provided with Thermochrons and snowflake collection materials. She plans to incorporate the HOW techniques: thermochrons, snow pit observations, and snowflake identification protocols into her Ph.D. dissertation on snow changes, and reindeer pastures in Northern Norway.

Thanks to HOW there has been a demonstration that remote expeditions can have a simple and continuous monitor of the temperature at hourly intervals if needed.

This HOW2008 event will feature the official launch of the IPY Global Snowflake Network (GSN). The Global Snowflake Network (GSN) is a program that is simultaneously a science program and an education program. When the validation of the procedures (collection and identification of the type of snowflakes and the associated satellite image archive, as a serial record of a storm), is achieved, then the program becomes a scientific resource - This is the ultimate goal. That's why NASA has launched the Global Snowflake Network (GSN), a massive project that aims to involve the general public to "collect and classify" falling snowflakes. The data will be compiled into a massive database, along with satellite images, that will help climatologists and others who study climate-related phenomena gain a better understanding of wintry meteorology as they track various snowstorms around the globe. A great deal of information about the atmosphere dynamics and cloud microphysics can be derived from the serial collection and identification of the types of snow crystals and the degree of riming of the snow crystals during the progress of a snow storm. Forecasting winter weather depends in part on cloud physics, which deals with precipitation type, and if it happens to be snow- the crystal type, size, and density of the snowflake population.

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Description of the 2006 HOW event

Description of the Snowflake Network and collection
protocols

The main HOW website

These youtube links are about ice art and the Global Snowflake Network: One, two, three

These links are PR pieces for the Global Snowflake Network: One, two, three