Snow VS Blizzard

I've seen pics of both blizzard and snow mutations on the internet.

I have found that the white in a snow corn is actually really white, whereas in a blizzard it is a more "colorless" white.

Does anyone have a pic of a snow and a blizzard together in the same pic for comparison.

In my personal opinion I think the snows are prettier. One they have a pattern and two what pattern they do have is pleasantly colored and three they are also glossier as well. Blizzard scales tend to have slightly more a satin finish than a gloss finish.

I've seen close up pics of both snow and blizzard on VMS Herps website in their corn section, and this shows the snow has a lot more white definition than does the blizzard.

The blizzard close up shows you that the scales are in fact essentially colorless.

Regards,
Benjamina

i dont have a pic, but snows have a pattern, blizzards are completely white. Snows have normal eyes, blizzards have red eyes, sorry i couldn't be more helpful :shrugs:

snows have red eyes.

Indeed, Snows have red eyes.
Here's mine again, Yes Snow, there is no Anery B in her blood.

you sure there's no charcoal in that snake? looks like a blizzard to me. is it really that white or is it the flash? where'd you get it? great looking snake nonetheless.

It looked a blizzard to me too .

We've been through this before.
I bought her cause she looked Blizzard
Yes, the flash bleached her out slightly
She is a whitish pink color with just a hint of pattern
I got her from a local breeder that I trust totally.
I suppose there is a chance of the B gene in there, but he says no and that''s good enough for me.

Comparison?

I have no trouble believing that that is a snow. I can see a faint pattern.

That is a snow corn. I can see her pattern outlined in a slightly yellow color on her back. From what I can tell, the camera bleeched her out somewhat. That looks like a "white" snow to me. I don't see any traces of pink.

As far as the difference between snow and blizzard. The snow and blizzard are bothe white snakes with red eyes. The snow still has yellow pigmentation in it's skin while the blizzard removes almost all of the yellow. They both do have patterns, but because the blizzards yellow is removed, it is very difficult to see. The only reason a snow has a clearly visible pattern is because it keeps its yellow pigments.

You would be correct in saying that a blizzard's scales are essentially clear, because a blizzard has genes that removes the blacks, yellows, and reds in it's coloration, giving off a patternless white appearance, sort of like a polar bears fur. The fur of the polar bear is actually a clear color to trap the suns rays and help heat the bear. Unlike the polar bear, the "clear" scales on a blizzard are caused by mutated genes, not by adaptation.

i can see her pattern too
snow!

i can see a yellow pattern.

does anyone realize the original post on this thread was in 2002?

E. g. guttata said:

The snow still has yellow pigmentation in it's skin while the blizzard removes almost all of the yellow. They both do have patterns, but because the blizzards yellow is removed, it is very difficult to see. The only reason a snow has a clearly visible pattern is because it keeps its yellow pigments.

You would be correct in saying that a blizzard's scales are essentially clear, because a blizzard has genes that removes the blacks, yellows, and reds in it's coloration, giving off a patternless white appearance, sort of like a polar bears fur. The fur of the polar bear is actually a clear color to trap the suns rays and help heat the bear. Unlike the polar bear, the "clear" scales on a blizzard are caused by mutated genes, not by adaptation.

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I have to disagree with this. Snows and blizzards are born with no yellow or almost no yellow. The pattern is not coming from yellow or lack of yellow.

The white we see on snows/blizzards is caused by iridophores. It's caused by light being scattered/reflected by the crystals in these iridophores.

The pink areas on snows are pink because they lack iridophores, so you get "flesh color" showing instead of white. Just like the pink color you see through human fingernails.

On blizzards, I would suspect that the iridophores are less dense, but they are not entirely absent from the saddle areas, which would be why they have a less distinct pattern and appear more (for lack of a better term) translucent. (We will probably see better answers to these questions over the next couple of years as microscopic examinations are done. )

About the snake not having any charcoal in it, all it takes is one individual, generations back, to be a carrier and the gene could pop up several generations later "out of nowhere." I would at least think it's a possibility, until it is ruled out. A lot of people simply say, "I never specifically crossed charcoals in," or "I never saw charcoals before in this line." But unless there were specific crosses to test this (and who does that? ) I would not eliminate the possibility. Not that it really matters, your snake is what it is, and it's pretty cool, but it's something to consider.

Blizzard AND snow . . .

Blizzard AND snow . .

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I have two blizzards here that are homozygous for both. The one pictured on this thread appears to be just like mine. I'm betting if that snake was bred to a charcoal, they'd get charcoals. Same with anerythristic. Most of my blizzards with lots of yellow in them are actually both snow and blizzard, but I have never had a so-called patternless blizzard be homozygous for snow.

In my opinion, that snake is at least a blizzard and probably both blizzard and snow. As Serp said, the breeder may not even be aware of that gene in his parents of this snake. It can hide for many generations 'till paired up with a genetically complementary mate.

Yellow in blizzards? Sure. I'd say that at least half the blizzards out there have noticable yellow on them. I challenge those that have yellow blizzards to do breeding trials to determine whether or not those snakes are actually snow corns in addition to being blizzards.

To address the original question of this thread, here is a family shot sired by one of my male blizzard snows. BTW, the mother of these babies is a phenotypic anerythristic A that is obviously het for amelanism and charcoal (anery B). On a trivial note, Rich sold me my first charcoals when they were called Pine Island aneries.

Would you class this as a snow or a blizzard?


I think blizzard but am not 100% sure.

I'd call it a snow. . .

cornman1979 said:

Would you class this as a snow or a blizzard?

I think blizzard but am not 100% sure.

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Looks snow to me. What we used to call bone-white snow.

I have to say, my blizzard that I bred last year has noticeable yellow outlines, as you can see in this picture. And out of double clutching to an Anery male she produced all Anery & Snow babies, which proved her out to be not only homo for Charcoal and Amel but also for Anery. So, this is interesting. This girl does stand up to what Don is saying.

I still say that that snow on the previous post here, "looks" like a blizzard and I also would not be surprised if she produced charcaol offspring if bred to a charcoal.

Very interesting that the yellow marked blizzards may be snow as well. The guy in my avitar was a very typical blizzard as a hatchling, but has developed quite marked yellow trim on his saddles with maturity. I didn't have any plans to breed him this spring, but in view of this information, I will pair him with my amel het anery female and see if we get some snows from that. Would be nice to be able to have an explaination for these blizzards that show the yellow.

Our yellow trimmed blizzard


The amel het anery A (she has produced snows and anery in the past but never bred to charcoal - so not sure if het for anery B)


mary v.

Personally, I don't think the presence of anery is what is making our charcoals become yellow. Hurley has a bunch of charcoals and all of them have some degree of yellow on them. One of them is unlikely to be even het for anery.. if we can show that charcoals without anery genes are still yellow, we might be able to completely drop the idea that charcoal is the "axanthism" many people take it to be. :sidestep:

A possible scenario is that the original charcoal was just "selectively bred" (by nature) for little or no yellow. With every outcross into new lines, the genetic makeup for "amount of yellow" would creep back toward the norm. It would be like taking a bucket of blue paint and mixing in random colors... the paint would become less blue over time because most of the stuff that's mixed in would be something other than blue.

The amount of yellow in charcoals would creep toward normal because nobody is particularly selecting for "no yellow" normals, hypos, amels, etc to cross into their charcoal projects, so every newly-recovered line of charcoals has more of those "make some yellow" genes in them.

Hurley's hypo charcoals have quite a bit of yellow on them. The male is being crossed to my normal het anery/hypo, so that cross should give us some information, too.

It will be interesting to see what pans out from future crosses. I suppose it will take some time, or quite a bit of looking backwards at existing crosses/lineage to figure out what's going on. I could be dead wrong and there actually could be a "yellow-reducing" agent involved in charcoals. :shrugs:

Yellow in blizzards . . .

Serpwidgets said:

Personally, I don't think the presence of anery is what is making our charcoals become yellow. Hurley has a bunch of charcoals and all of them have some degree of yellow on them. One of them is unlikely to be even het for anery.. if we can show that charcoals without anery genes are still yellow, we might be able to completely drop the idea that charcoal is the "axanthism" many people take it to be. :sidestep:

I'm definitely not saying that all blizzards with yellow are homozygous for snow, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary at this time, it's certainly a possibility. Likewise, I'm not saying that charcoals with yellow are homozygous for anerythristic A. But let's face it. Before the charcoals and blizzards were discovered to be non allelic to anery, people were breeding lots of snows to blizzards and aneries to charcoals. Heck even after they figured it out the practice continues today. Also the anery and charcoal genes have been swapped around so much that people breeding charcoal to charcoal OR blizzard to blizzard OR for that matter snow to snow could be unaware of the presence of the opposite color gene hiding in just one of the pairs, (homozygous or heterozygous).

As you say, we can guess all we want, but the proof'll be in the pudding. Now we have a larger group of folks on the watch, we might gather enough data to form a more reliable theory.

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