Google has made one or two strange choices for its homepage doodles in the past – the 119th birthday of the ice cream sundae anyone? – and today is no exception. The search giant's doodle is celebrating the 125th birthday of the largest ever recorded snowflake.
The doodle begins with a cow grazing in a snow-covered field, with the Google logo and a lake in the background. But the cow's meal is suddenly interrupted by a massive snowflake that comes to rest at his feet.
The gigantic snowflake in question was observed on Jan. 28, 1887 at Fort Keogh, Montana. It measured 15 inches (38cm) in diameter, and holds the title for largest snowflake in the Guiness Book of Records.
As the New York Times noted in 2007, the Guiness Book says a rancher spotted the huge snowflake. He "called them 'larger than milk pans' and measured one at 15 inches wide. But no corroborating evidence supports the claim."
Larger flakes are probably more common than one might think, but they can be difficult to transport or photograph, so most go undocumented, the Times said.
Next July, NASA will team up with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other international partners for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, which will measure global precipitation.
"Its science objectives are: to improve ongoing efforts to predict climate by providing near-global measurement of precipitation, its distribution, and physical processes; to improve the accuracy of weather and precipitation forecasts through more accurate measurement of rain rates and latent heating; and to provide more frequent and complete sampling of the Earth's precipitation," NASA said.
In discussing the mission back in 2007, Walter A. Petersen, a senior scientist working on GPM, said "understanding snowflake sizes and shapes was important because big ones, if unaccounted for in the global measurements, could fool space sensors into overestimating the amount of precipitation."
For more on Google's doodles, meanwhile, see the slideshow below. One of the company's more popular doodles last year was a playable image in honor of musician Les Paul, which eventually got its own standalone site. The company has also honored Gumby creator Art Clokey, Muppets creator Jim Henson, Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, and Intel co-founder Robert Noyce.
In 2011, it was revealed that Google obtained a patent for its popular homepage doodles, covering "systems and methods for enticing users to access a Web site."