The Snowstorm Magic Trick: A Blizzard From Your Hands

Few effects in magic look as big as the snowstorm. A performer tears a few strips of tissue, or simply waves a fan over an empty hand, and a blizzard of white flakes pours into the air, swirling across the stage and over the front rows. It lasts a few seconds, it needs no explanation, and it is one of the most beautiful finishes in the art.

What the audience sees

There are many presentations, but the moment is always the same: something small and ordinary becomes a storm.

• Torn and restored — a strip of tissue is torn into pieces, and when the performer fans the pieces, they explode into snow.
• The fan — a paper fan is waved over a closed hand, and snow streams out of it.
• The finale — at the end of an act, the performer simply opens their hands and the stage fills with white.

It reads from the back of a theatre, it works in a living room, and it looks spectacular in photographs and video.

The Chinese snowstorm

The effect is widely known as the Chinese snowstorm or the snowstorm in China, and its roots are usually traced to Chinese and Japanese conjurers, whose fan and paper effects amazed Western audiences in the nineteenth century. Western magicians adopted it, and by the early twentieth century it was a standard of the music-hall stage. It has stayed in the repertoire ever since, because nothing else fills a stage so completely for so little.

When to use it

• As a finale. It is the natural last moment of an act: big, beautiful, and impossible to follow.
• After a torn-and-restored effect, as a second climax.
• At Christmas and winter events, where it needs no explanation at all.

Bear in mind the reset: the snow goes everywhere, and it is not coming back. Each performance uses fresh snowstorm paper, and someone will be sweeping up afterwards. Most performers save it for the end of the show for that reason as much as for the effect.

Pairing it

A snowstorm sits well after silk and cane productions — colour, then a final flood of white. It is equally at home in a stage illusion act, a parlour show or a close-up performer's single big moment.

What you need

Snowstorm paper is sold in blocks, one per performance. A pack of twelve covers a season of shows, or a run of Christmas performances.