Much of all middle latitude precipitation starts out as snow crystals; rain is just the melted form of snow. They may also leave the cloud as snowflakes, which are aggregates of a number of crystals stuck together, sometimes "glued" together by rime ice. The term "snowflake" is frequently used to refer to large, individual crystals with dendritic shapes (see dendrite, below), but the proper term for these particles is "snow crystals".

The distinction between snow and snow showers is the same as for rain and rain showers.

At "high" temperatures near 0°C (and sometimes just above), the snow is slightly wet so its density is much higher, and the texture is slushy. This makes the snow harder to shovel due to its weight, and makes for miserable driving and hiking conditions.

There are three basic shapes of snow crystals: plate, column, dendrite. The picture on the upper right has a hexagonal plate barely visible in its center. On the right side of this photo, the upper of the two small crystals is a hexagonal columnar prism. Far left photo, clearly visible is a thick hexagonal plate (actually, it's hollow, which accounts for the circular structure in the middle. Just to its right and up is a broad-branch stellar crystal, so-named because of its star-like shape. Photo at lower left has a dendrite crystal that is somewhat stellar-like. Dendrites start as stellar crystals, then add some fern-like structure to the arms. Snow crystal/flake art are usually dendrites. The lower right photo shows a snowflake, an aggregate of many ice crystals, slightly exploded from landing on the black pad.