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Dreaming of a White Christmas Mystery Cache

Hidden : 1/28/2018
Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:


The published co-ordinates highlight the location of Eastbourne's Weather Station.

Eastbourne is renowned for its many sunny days throughout the year.
This makes it all the more exciting for the local children when the snow finally comes.

Have you ever wondered how snowflakes are made?
If so, wonder no more!

Snowflakes - source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake :
A snowflake is a single ice crystal that has achieved a sufficient size, and may have amalgamated with others, then falls through the Earth's atmosphere as snow.
Each flake nucleates around a dust particle in supersaturated air masses by attracting super-cooled cloud water droplets, which freeze and accrete in crystal form.
Complex shapes emerge as the flake moves through differing temperature and humidity zones in the atmosphere, such that individual snowflakes differ in detail from one another, but may be categorized in eight broad classifications and at least 80 individual variants.
The main constituent shapes for ice crystals, from which combinations may occur, are needle, column, plate and rime.
Snow appears white in color despite being made of clear ice.
This is due to diffuse reflection of the whole spectrum of light by the small crystal facets of the snowflakes.
Snowflakes form in a wide variety of intricate shapes, leading to the notion that "no two are alike".
Although nearly-identical snowflakes can exist, they are very unlikely to be found in nature.
Initial attempts to find identical snowflakes by photographing thousands of them with a microscope from 1885 onward by Wilson Alwyn Bentley found the wide variety of snowflakes we know about today.

The shape of a snowflake is determined primarily by the temperature and humidity at which it is formed.
The most common snow particles are visibly irregular.
Freezing air down to −3 °C (27 °F) promotes planar crystals (thin and flat).
In colder air down to −8 °C (18 °F), the crystals form as needles, hollow columns, prisms or needles. In air as cold as −22 °C (−8 °F), shapes become plate-like again, often with branched or dendritic features.
At temperatures below −22 °C (−8 °F), the crystals becomes plate-like or columnar, depending on the degree of saturation.
Shape is also a function of whether the prevalent moisture is above or below saturation.
Forms below the saturation line trend more towards solid and compact.
Crystals formed in supersaturated air trend more towards lacy, delicate and ornate.
Many more complex growth patterns also form such as side-planes, bullet-rosettes and also planar types depending on the conditions and ice nuclei.
If a crystal has started forming in a column growth regime, at around −5 °C (23 °F), and then falls into the warmer plate-like regime, then plate or dendritic crystals sprout at the end of the column, producing so called "capped columns".

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Puzzle: svaq gur fbhepr bs gur nggnpurq fabjsynxr. Cache: ab fvta bs vg.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)