I just came back from a walk in the woods and have seen a form of frost I’ve never seen before. I was wondering about the name for it.
It resembles cotton candy growing out of a dead branch, whisps of it curling up to 4 cm long. I live in an area in which frost commonly develops on trees, other vegetation, and even on the ground under the right conditions of humidity and temperature in the winter. These crystals usually look like small feathers that grow larger over time, unless shaken off by the wind. From a distance, they give the trees a magical frosted appearance. However, at present, this kind of frost has not grown on the trees.
The frost I found on the dead branch was a completely isolated sample. It stood out white on an otherwise leafy brown ground. We do not have a white Christmas this year.
Does anyone know the name for cotton-candy frost? Or for the feathery frost that develops on trees, for that matter?
While we’re at it, I was about to post asking for a word for the type of snow we had yesterday: thick white snow coated the trees and thoroughly obscured the blackness of the trunks and branches. It was stunningly beautiful.
Surely there’s an word or idiom for this type of snowfall?
[quote author=ilka link=board=what;num=1040919724;start=0#0 date=12/26/02 at 11:22:04]Does anyone know the name for cotton-candy frost? Or for the feathery frost that develops on trees, for that matter?
Sounds like rime to me - if there’s a prevailing wind, it grows into the wind in long feathers.
(I’m just back from a walk in the Grampian mountains - every fence-post looked like this, on the open ground above the tree-line.)
In extreme cases, the effect is quite baroquely stunning. I remember encountering a triangulation pillar with a week’s growth of rime on it - it looked like a giant white wave painted by Hokusai.
Grant, thanks for the word rime. After searching for rime and hoar on the Internet, I found what I saw. They were "frost flowers", which form when the moisture inside a stalk, or in this case, a wet dead branch, freezes and is squeezed out through the breaks in the stem in very thin threads.
Here are some photos. For those who are interested, here is a site with more detail on how they are formed. I’m fascinated. I’ve never seen this before.
Tamisaac, I don’t know a word for that kind of snow. I always call is "wet snow" that sticks to everything. While looking up snow, though, I found this website that has all sorts of info on snow crystals and the most beautiful photos.
We did have a good laugh today when the TV news reported on the storm in NY and asked a lady in the park walking her dog what she thought of the weather. She said, "Oh, it is beautiful. But I can’t deal with the shopping."
Depth of winter in Tel Aviv reporting in. Brrr. 12C. (OK, overcast and wet, but it was sunny yesterday.)
I know ice-coated branches, but I’ve never seen these beautiful ice extrusions before. I wonder if they occur only in certain types of plants, or only where there are freezing temperatures, but no months-long deep freeze.
A special seasonal treat is visiting Niagara Falls during the winter. The water still flows, but over time a huge build-up of ice occurs over the falls. Locally, it’s called the Ice Castle, and it really is a spectacle. If you visit, bundle up, because even on mild days the surrounding air is very humid and the cold r-e-a-l-l-y penetrates.
[quote author=ilka link=board=what;num=1040919724;start=0#4 date=12/26/02 at 17:37:52]Grant, is this what you see on your fence posts?
No, what I was talking about was a baroque build-up of rime on the up-wind side of really any structure exposed to the weather. I have seen 15-centimetre feathers of rime protruding horizontally from loops of fence-wire, for instance, as well as the amazing Hokusai triangulation post I mentioned earlier.
I have seen frost flowers, though, and I guess I should have thought of them, since you said that your branch was the only one affected.
Ilka, thank you for that wonderful site! My children, husband and I had a marvelous treat tonight before bedtime. We all sat together and looked at and discussed the photos we found on this page.
So, is there no term for the wonderful, heavy snow that makes absolutely everything look white? The trees were thick, blanketed-looking, pure white crystally things. (Ah, the eloquence ::)).
[quote author=Agoraphile link=board=what;num=1040919724;start=0#6 date=12/26/02 at 18:25:28]I wonder if they occur only in certain types of plants, or only where there are freezing temperatures, but no months-long deep freeze.
Apparently they form on stems of late-blooming plants that still have a lot of sap in them by late fall, such as ironweed and crownbeard. Also, they only form at the beginning of the cold season. Another condition is that the air must be still.
I can’t think of a specific name for the particular kind of frost you mentioned but the only words I can think of (you’ve already mentioned hoar and rime but I’ve left them in anyway!)connected with frost in English are:
1. hoar-frostfrozen, distinctly crystalline, water vapour deposited in clear still weather on grass etc.
hoar.Old English ‘har’ = Old Saxon, Old High German ‘her’ old, venerable (German hehr august, stately, sacred), Old Norse ‘harr’ hoary, old from. Germanic, from. Indo-European stem meaning ‘shine’.
2.rime Old English ‘hrim’ = Dutch ‘rijm’, Old Norse ‘hrim’. Meteorol. Frost formed on cold objects by the rapid freezing of supercooled water vapour in cloud or fog.
rime-frost from RIME + FROST, corresponding to Icelandic. ‘hrimfrost’, Old Swedish. ‘hrimfrost’ frost Old English frost, usually. forst = Old Frisian frost, forst, Old Saxon, (Old) High German frost (Dutch. vorst), Old Norse frost, from Germanic, from weak grade of base of FREEZE.
3.verglas French., from verre glass + glas (now glace) ice. A glassy coating of ice formed on the ground or an exposed surface by rain freezing on impact or the refreezing of thawed ice.
Australian aborigines attribute frost to icicles thrown down to earth from seven sisters whose bodies sparkle with ice. These frosty sisters could not live with men on earth, so they sought a home in the heavens, each one becoming a star of the Pleiades constellation.
I thought Jack Frost may be related to Jack, the common man, as in the WOTD we once had. But no, the Weather Almanac says
Jack is likely the son of the Norse god of wind Kari, born Jokul ("icicle") Frosti ("frost"). When Jokul Frosti immigrated to England with the Norse, he became Jack Frost, an elf-like being who colours tree leaves and paints patterns on windows.
[quote author=McAntiChrist link=board=what;num=1040919724;start=0#11 date=12/27/02 at 11:01:55] . . . 3.verglas French., from verre glass + glas (now glace) ice. A glassy coating of ice formed on the ground or an exposed surface by rain freezing on impact or the refreezing of thawed ice.
This sounds like what we call "black ice" or "glare ice," ice which looks black and wet like water from a distance, until you find out too late that it’s ice after all.
[quote author=ilka link=board=what;num=1040919724;start=0#12 date=12/29/02 at 03:31:11]Hey, Linnet, I found that the Aborigines have a legend regarding frost. I don’t know about the Maori, though.
What a lovely legend! I’m not sure if the Maori have a similar one.
All this talk of snow and ice makes me rather uncomfortable. I never go anywhere near snow (it is rather horrid stuff) and really dislike winter.
While we’re at it, I was about to post asking for a word for the type of snow we had yesterday: thick white snow coated the trees and thoroughly obscured the blackness of the trunks and branches. It was stunningly beautiful.
