BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) – Cold. Slippery. Ugh.

Snow evokes all sorts of reactions here in the Northeast, few as poetic as the late Wilson Alwyn Bentley’s. He saw the flakes as “exquisite crystals from cloudland.”

So fascinated by the falling snow was the Vermont farmer that he spent two years developing a method of photographing individual snowflakes through his microscope, finally succeeding in 1885, at the age of 19.

Bentley would spend nearly four decades capturing thousands of intricate images on glass plates, earning the nickname “Snowflake Man” among his neighbors, who thought it all a bit odd.

For years, the Buffalo Museum of Science has kept a large collection of Bentley’s images under careful wraps to keep the glass photomicrographic plates from disintegrating.

Now the public can view snow through Bentley’s eyes at a new digital library of his work.

It may even change some minds.

“I view snow in a very visual, artistic sense after working so closely with his collection and seeing all the beautiful, beautiful images that resulted,” said June Abbas, a University at Buffalo professor whose graduate students created the digital library from the museum’s collection.

It was Bentley who said that no two snowflakes are alike. His images are proof: Latticed hexagons, needly stars, and lace-petaled flowers.

“I am fascinated with the details of each of the different snowflakes and how really different they are,” Abbas said.

The digital library displays about 154 of the museum’s nearly 9,000 snow crystals, with plans to add more over time.

Since buying the collection from Bentley’s niece in 1947, the museum has used some of the images in publications and exhibits, but the 3-by-4 inch glass plates have been largely off-limits to the public. Too fragile to display, they are kept in acid-free boxes in a climate-controlled room to keep the emulsion from peeling.

The digital library brings them safely out of their storage.

“It was to get them out there for the public to see without having to touch them all the time,” said Kathy Leacock, associate curator of collections. “Plus, now you don’t have to be in Buffalo. You can be all over the world and look at the slides.”

The images are supplemented by pages from nine notebooks Bentley filled with his weather observations and analysis. The self-taught meteorologist and photographer detailed not only the wind and temperature but photographic process for his images.

Other posted samples of the prolific Bentley’s writings open a window into his lifelong fascination with snow.

“There seemed to be a delightful and gem-bestrewn realm of nature awaiting exploration and discovery and sure to richly reward the investigator,” he wrote in 1910 for Technical World magazine.

To produce his slides, Bentley captured snowflakes on a black board and used a splinter of wood to painstakingly transfer a flake onto the slide of his microscope, taking care to keep it flat for even light reflection.

“It takes me quite awhile sometimes,” he told a reporter for The Vermonter in 1922, “and I have to breathe occasionally, but I turn my face away, take a quick breath and get to work again before the flake melts.”

He wrote in his 1910 article that his crystals were beginning to be recognized for their artistic value by manufacturers of ceramics and fabrics, and that additional uses were yet untapped.

“It seems likely that these beautiful objects from on high will soon come into their own, and receive the appreciation and study that their exquisite beauty and great interest as crystallographic objects entitle them,” he wrote.

Many of Bentley’s images have been used in jewelry, posters and clothing now sold by Jericho, Vt., Historical Society, in Bentley’s hometown, with royalties going to the Buffalo museum.

Bentley died in 1933, of pneumonia, after walking home in a blizzard.