It does not actually snow, for example, at South Pole. What lies on the polar ice cap around Pole is “diamond dust,” ice crystals drifting down on perennially light winds. And a visitor is able to see farther over the surface of the planet here than he or she can anywhere in the middle latitudes, almost twice as far, because Earth flattens out at the poles, making the planet an oblate spheroid. The atmosphere above the pole also flattens out, making the atmospheric layer thinner and creating an effective pressure altitude at Pole of around 11,500 feet, not 9,300 feet. Some visitors arriving by
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