Strange Ice

[R G]

While I was out hunting this morning I saw the strangest ice I have ever seen. I was in a small food plot on a management area and at first I thought there were some cotton balls in it. I started wondering why there would be cotton plants in the middle of nowhere. A closer look revealed that what I thought were cotton balls at a distance were actually round pieces of delicate ice. Each ball looked like a flower made of thin disks that formed a round shape with layres of the disks curling to almost resemble a rose pedal. I didn't have a camara and they were so delicate that the slightest disturbance shattered them.

Now I have seen Dog Ice, or whatever you call the ice that spews out of the ground on cold mornings, but never anytheing like this. Any ideas of what it may have been?

 

[letsgohuntin]

I have seen the same thing before R G, but don'y exactly know how it forms like that...

 

[potsticker]

As the ground freezes it expells moisture, that moisture takes many forms, in the past ive seen ice spew 6" up from the ground and look like white grass. This moisture can take a look of snowflakes.

 

[dawg2]

I saw a flowerbed that had ice poking out of the ground like little towers several inches high and each one had a wood chip on it. I have also seen ice on the side of roads where it had a single rock on each piece of ice poking out of the ground, have not seen what you described though.

 

[Ulysses]

It sounds like it's pretty much the same thing, only this is water freezing inside the stems of the plants as opposed to the ground. My guess, anyway.

 

[SBG]

I saw some of those during a hunting trip to Missouri a few years back and the locals referred to them as "frost turnips."

 

[rip18]

I can't remember the other term for "frost turnips" either, but there is another neat term for it.

Cold causes some of the plant parts to die & other parts of them to crack & open up. The holes or wounds seep a little water which freezes on the surface. The capillary pressure from inside the plant draws up more water which pushes this thin sheet of ice out the pore/crack where it freezes. This continues (often in mostly dormant annuals/perennials of the same species in a large area, like a food plot). As it continues, these delicate patterns of ice are formed around or on the stem.

I always liked to see those as a kid.