In the city where the authors live, located on the shore of Lake Ontario, children have ample opportunity to interact with snow. Water vapor rising from the relatively warm lake surface produces tremendous "lake effect" snowfalls when frigid winter winds blow. Snow piles along roadways after each passing storm, creating impressive snow banks. When a tractor-mounted snow blower slices through these snow banks, the succession of snowstorms is revealed as interesting layers of different thicknesses and colors. As science education professors with an interest in geology, the authors could not pass up the opportunity to study sedimentary processes and phase changes with the mounds of snow right in their own front yards. Their colleague--a fourth-grade teacher at a local school with an abundance of snow banks--teamed up with the authors to create a weeklong snow bank investigation.