In this tutorial, we are going to learn about how to create a snowfall animation by using CSS and JavaScript.

Codepen demo

Here is our snowfall animation demo.

See the Pen Css snow animation by saigowtham (@saigowthamr) on CodePen.

Getting started

First, we need to create an html markup that contains a div tag and an i tag with snowflake icon is added.

The snowflake icon we are using here is taken from weather icons package

< div class = " container " > < i class = " wi wi-snowflake-cold flake " > </ i > </ div >

Css

Let’s add the CSS styling to the container and the flake classes.

body { font-family : sans-serif ; background : #070606e8 ; background-image : url ( http : //photoshopdesire.com /wp-content/uploads/2016/02/day2night-after-photoshop.jpg ) ; background-repeat : no-repeat ; background-size : cover ; background-position : center ; } .container { height : 100vh ; overflow : hidden ; } .flake { color : rgb ( 247 , 252 , 243 ) ; font-size : 2rem ; padding : 1rem ; animation : fall 2s linear forwards infinite ; animation-delay : 1s ; } @keyframes fall { from { transform : translateY ( -10vh ) ; } to { transform : translateY ( 100vh ) ; } }

We are animating the snowflake with fall animation infinitely.

But currently, if we see the output there is only a single snowflake is falling.

JavaScript

Now, we are using JavaScript to create multiple snowflakes dynamically and added it to the div container.

const flake = document . querySelector ( ".flake" ) ; const container = document . querySelector ( ".container" ) ; function createFlake ( ) { const clone = flake . cloneNode ( true ) ; clone . style . paddingLeft = Math . random ( ) * 10 + "px" ; clone . style . animationDuration = Math . random ( ) * 5 + 3 + "s" ; clone . style . opacity = Math . random ( ) * 1 ; container . append ( clone ) ; } const s = setInterval ( createFlake , 100 ) ; setTimeout ( ( ) => { clearInterval ( s ) ; } , 3000 ) ;

In the above code, first we accessed two dom nodes (flake,container) using document.querySelector() .

The createFlake() function is used to create a new snowflake and append it to the div container.

setInterval method runs the createFlake() function on every 100 milliseconds.

At the final, we are using the setTimeout() method to stop the snowflake creation after 3000 milliseconds or 3s.

Find me on twitter @saigowthamr

Bonus

If you want to create snowflakes with multiple colors you can use this code inside createFlake() function.

const randomC = Math . random ( ) * 200 ; const randomA = Math . random ( ) * 200 ; const randomB = Math . random ( ) * 56 ; clone . style . color = ` rgb( ${ randomA + 256 } , ${ randomB + 200 } , ${ randomC + 100 } ) ` ;

Demo