Snow is the frozen state of the water. When frozen water, ice is colorless, and snow appears white. This is because ice crystals and snowflakes interact with light in different ways. Sunlight contains light rays of all wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. However, our eyes can only perceive light rays of visible wavelengths. When light interacts with an object, it can be absorbed, reflected, or transmitted by the object. The object is transparent if it passes the light unchanged. It absorbs some of the light, if it reflects light of a certain wavelength, it appears in the color of the light it reflects. If the object reflects all of the rays of light of visible wavelength, it is white.
Ice looks transparent as it transmits light. To answer the question of why snow particles appear white, let's first look at how snow crystals are formed.
When the temperature drops below the freezing point, the water vapor in the clouds becomes solid by concentrating on small dust particles. As this process continues, the snow crystals take the shape of a hexagonal prism and continue to grow by forming branches in the corners of the hexagon.
So snow crystals are not frozen raindrops. Although the snow looks white, the snow crystals that make up the snow are transparent. When the snowflakes formed by the combination of snow crystals interact with light, they change direction by reflecting from the surface of one crystal to another because of the unique hexagonal shapes of the snow crystals. Snow appears white because the rays of all wavelengths hitting the snowflakes reflect equally.