Hans Verlinde is an associate professor of meteorology at Penn State University. He is also the site scientist for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility in Barrow, Alaska.
After calculating, and recalculating, he arrived at an estimation of the number of snowflakes that would fall if 5 inches of snow blanketed the 2,000 square miles of Lancaster County, PA...which is the amount predicted to fall on the county tonight.
It is 5.2 quintillion snowflakes.
For the generalists, 5 quintillion is a 5 followed by 18 zeros.
For you sticklers, the actual number would be 5,179,976,221,000,000,000 snowflakes (rounded off to the nearest billion).
Just how much is 5.2 quintillion?
It's hard to find a good comparison, as the number is so vast, but here's a few that are close, give or take a few quintillion. The world's insect population is estimated to be about 10 quintillion. And your odds of filling out a perfect NCAA bracket in your office pool, if you guessed randomly, is one in 18.5 quintillion, according to the Dr. Math blog.
http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/340729
This message was modified Jan 21, 2011 by Paul7
