Snow snakes? Weather phenomenon resembles frozen reptiles hung in trees, experts say 

One of the internet’s weirdest hoaxes involves a ”snow snake” that can freeze blood with its bite, yet there is a grain of truth buried in the farce.

Something resembling snow snakes will occasionally materialize after winter storms, and the disconcerting images often end up on social media.

But it’s a weather phenomenon, not a reptile.

An example — photographed slithering along a tree branch — appeared earlier this month on a Facebook page devoted to wildlife and weather in New Hampshire.

“I’ve been telling people for years to be careful of the snow snake,” Daniel Sullivan posted Jan. 1, after sharing the photo. “No one believed me. Well here’s proof, so please beware of the snow snake.”

It was clearly a joke, but some people were fooled. “Sure looks like a snow snake!” one woman wrote.

Days later, the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks department shared photos sent to them, showing a few dozen snow snakes in the trees. The photos were taken in nearby Minnesota, the department said.

“These photos (are) of a phenomenon called ‘snow ropes,’ also called snow garlands or snow snakes,” the department wrote Jan. 7 on Facebook. “Conditions have to be just right for these to form and they are very fragile!”

The necessary conditions include a perfect mix of temperature, gravity and “bonded” ice crystals, experts say.

The American Meteorology Society describes snow garland as “a rare and beautiful phenomenon in which snow is festooned from trees, fences, etc., in the form of a rope of snow, several feet long and several inches in diameter.”

“Such garlands form only when the surface temperature is close to the melting point, for only then will the requisite films of slightly supercooled water exist.” the AMS says.

NOAA reports that a snow garland 43 inches long was once recorded “sagging from the top of a fence at the Central Meteorological Observatory in Tokyo.”

This story was originally published January 22, 2021 at 3:23 PM with the headline "Snow snakes? Weather phenomenon resembles frozen reptiles hung in trees, experts say ."