Is that snow? We’re in the middle of a heat wave in July, it can’t be snow! What is that?
That is woolly pine scale. It’s a bug that produces a white, waxy mass on pine trees. The bug sucks the sap and nutrients out of the tree.
Can you see the tiny bug under the wax? (It’s the brown thing in the center of the white.) I watched it crawl along the pine needles. At first, the moving white wax was the only thing that I could see. After a while the insect rotated a bit and I could see its body.
Have you ever seen woolly pine scale? You can read more about it from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.