Thanks to “Snowflake Bentley” (Wilson A Bentley), who lived in Vermont in the US at the turn of the 19th century, we know that snowflakes can take on many shapes. He was the first to photograph a single snowflake crystal, and in his lifetime he took over 5,000 photos of snowflakes, categorising them into 80 types, including needles, columns and a wide variety of hexagonal forms.