# Would snow fall on the surface of Mars because of uncovering the ice deposit in Utopia Planitia?

In 2016 a large ice deposit was found within the Utopia Planitia region on Mars by the SHARAD instrument on board of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The thickness of the deposit ranges from about 80 to 170 meters with a composition of 50% to 85% water ice, mixed with dust or rocky particles.
It is shielded from the atmosphere by a soil covering estimated to be about 1 to 10 meters thick.
The volume of the ice is estimated to be about 14,300 cubic km, so the mass will be more than 13 teratonnes, the mass of the atmosphere being 25 teratonnes.

If bulldozers could remove a part of the soil covering in summertime, round midday the ice would sublimate into the atmosphere, where at a certain height the water vapour could become cold enough to crystallize.

But would this really happen with such a low atmospheric pressure and could the crystals become large enough to fall down on the surface like snow ?

Actually it already snows on Mars. The snow, made of carbon dioxide, has been observed and studied by orbiting spacecraft. Aside from the different chemical composition from the stuff we shovel on Earth, Martian $$\text{CO}_2$$ snow also is very finely divided, microscopic in size in fact; likely this is related to the low density of available material and the very fine nature of the dust on which the snowflakes nucleate. In fact studying the snow could provide clues about the atmospheric Martian dust on which it nucleates.