Ice surface ridges
IMG_6291-processed-scaled.jpg

Description: I saw some pretty patterns on the ice which sheathed the branches and leaves of trees this morning. The patterns were irregular networks of thin, low ridges on the surface (I could tell they were just on the surface when I broke off pieces of ice), and they seemed to have a similar spatial scale on all the branches and leaves where I saw them. Though, now that I mention this, I think I only saw them on the thinner branches and the leaves; and, I'm not sure about whether they were on all the leaves or not.

We had a light snow yesterday, just below freezing (~-1°C, and ~20 km/hr winds, according to Wunderground), and today it warmed up to about 2°C, with a light breeze (~15 km/hr), by about 11:45 AM. The snow froze over night onto all the small branches to form sheaths of ice.

Any ideas how the network of ridges might have formed?

The branch, plus the sheath of ice, was about 17 mm wide at the center of the image (where it splits). The photo was taken using a Canon Powershot ELPH 100HS. It was enhanced in Photoshop CS3 by adjusting levels to improve contrast in high tones, then using a high-pass filter to bring out details of the ridges. For the high-pass filtering, the image was duplicated, then a high-pass filter (10 pixels) was applied, and finally the filtered image was superimposed on the (contrast adjusted) original, using the "screen" blend mode. The image was then cropped, and scaled to 1/2 original resolution.

Page creator's name: Mickey von Dassow
Page creator's contact info: Through the comments would work best.


ice pattern-formation physics winter

Created: 25 Feb 2015 19:53
Updated: 25 Feb 2015 19:56

Comments: 26 Feb 2015 00:04

#Comments: 1


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