Photo: Jean Moser During the recent bitter cold we had here, my daughter looked out a window to the courtyard of her home where she has a heavy plastic "fish pond." The pond contains water year round, as it is the home of some very hardy gold fish. Something strange caught her eye. Being as curious as I, she and her camera braved the cold to take a closer look. A single frozen stem, rising unsupported by anything, had branched into a trio of hollow, tubular ice formations, as shown in the photo above; there's nothing below it except water, and it is about 6 inches from the pond wall. If you look closely at the photo, you can see a few wrinkles of ice around it, but this extrusion (if that's what it is) was the only one anywhere on the pond.
Not having any knowledge of what causes this sort of thing, I can only declare it a "puzzlement."
Information on the cause of this phenomemon would be gratefully received. We've already looked at "frost flowers" and this seems to be different.
7 comments:
Well, I've heard of wormholes in space, but who ever heard of one in ice?!
How very weird!
Never ever seen anything like this, Pat.. If you ever find out, let us know. It's beautiful though.
Hugs,
Betsy
Very cool (pun not really intended), Pat. Could it have formed elsewhere (tree or bush branch) and fallen there?
Hilary: No it definitely arose from the water. She found a similar extrusion from a puddle on her daughter's slide on the same morning. It was solid, not tubular, though. I'm hoping to get her photo of that one, also.
That is FABULOUS Pat. We must find out how it was made!
It is an ice spike! Search the web and you will find that you can grow them in your freeze, but Nature's version of them are so much more fantastic!
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