Snow cones or snow balls are a variation of the shaved ice dessert commonly served throughout North America in paper cones or styrofoam cups. The dessert consists of ice shavings that are topped with flavored sugar syrup.

Depending on the region of the continent, the terms "snowball" and "snow cone" may refer to different things' where the distinction is made, the former refers to a dessert made of finely shaved ice ("like soft fresh snow"), while the latter contains ice that is coarser and more granular ("crunchy").

In the 1850s the American Industrial Revolution made ice commercially available. Ice houses in New York would commonly sell ice to places like Florida. To transport the ice to Florida, the ice houses would send a wagon with a huge block of ice south. The route to Florida would pass right though Baltimore, MD. In Baltimore, children would run up to the wagon and ask for a small scraping of ice. Before long, mothers started to make flavoring in anticipation of their child receiving some ice. The first flavor these moms made was a current Baltimore favorite: egg custard. Egg custard was an easy flavor to make as all that was in it was eggs, vanilla and sugar.

Snow is a form of precipitation in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure. Snowflakes come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Types which fall in the form of a ball due to melting and refreezing, rather than a flake, are known as graupel, ice pellets or snow grains. Snowfall amount and its related liquid equivalent precipitation amount are determined using a variety of different rain gauges.

The process of precipitating snow is called snowfall. Snowfall tends to form within regions of upward motion of air around a type of low-pressure system known as an extratropical cyclone. Snow can fall poleward of these systems' associated warm fronts and within their comma head precipitation patterns (called such due to the comma-like shape of the cloud and precipitation pattern around the poleward and west sides of extratropical cyclones). Where relatively warm water bodies are present, for example due to water evaporation from lakes, lake-effect snowfall becomes a concern downwind of the warm lakes within the cold cyclonic flow around the backside of extratropical cyclones. Lake-effect snowfall can be locally heavy. Thundersnow is possible within a cyclone's comma head and within lake effect precipitation bands. In mountainous areas, heavy snow is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation, if the atmosphere is cold enough.

A cone (from the Greek κῶνος, Latin conus) is a basic geometrical shape; see cone (geometry).

Cone may also refer to: