Don't eat yellow (or white) snow

Good thing I didn’t eat too much snow when I was home last week. Here’s an Associated Press story we ran in our paper today.

“Those falling snowflakes may have a surprise inside — bacteria. Most snow and rain forms in chilly conditions high in the sky, and scientists have long known that, under most conditions, the moisture needs something to cling to in order to condense. A new study shows a large share of those so-called nucleators turn out to be bacteria that can affect plants. In some samples, as much as 85 percent of the nuclei were bacteria, according to the findings reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science. The bacteria were most common in France, Montana and the Yukon, and were present to a lesser degree in Antarctica.”