Winter scenes

Winter scenes from the last few days in New England...

Salt marsh in Duxbury:

 

Snow Bunting habitat:

 

 

Frozen ripples in a stream:

 

 

 Icy sea dragon?  :)

 

Happy holidays, everyone!

Frost and flakes

 

This morning we woke up to a local air temperature of ~13°F (-10.5°C) in Massachusetts.  When we stepped outside, Eric noticed these beautiful frost crystals on the windshield of the car.

Looking more closely, the patterns and details were spectacular.  Want to see?

 

 

 

Happy Winter Solstice!

Frozen fluidity -- Part 2

Following up last night's post, here are a few more ice photos.  As a reminder, these are close-ups of patterns within thin sheets of ice on tree trunks (photographed in Walpole, Massachusetts, on 26 December 2017):

 

 

 

 

It's so much fun to know that you can find beautiful patterns like this in the backyard!

 

Frozen fluidity

 

We were curious about the patterns in the ice droplets that I showed in last night's post, so we went out to look for more examples.  The frozen droplets were no longer there, but Eric spotted some amazing shapes and patterns in very thin sheets of ice on tree trunks.

I couldn't pick just one photo, so here are several examples.

 

Some of the patterns reminded us of old window glass:

 

The patches of ice were very small — most were only ~1-2 cm across.  The individual "cells" that you see in the images were much smaller than that, probably only ~2 mm across.  I captured these views with the microscope function on my point-and-shoot camera.  [I love that function!  It's like having a microscope in the field!]

 

Some of the cells contained very simple and regular patterns.  Others had very complex and chaotic patterns.  I'll show more of the latter tomorrow, but here's a hint of what's to come:

 

Winter celebration

 

Yesterday's combination of rain and cold temperatures caused glaze ice to form on tree branches in Walpole, Massachusetts.  The outer limbs were completely encased in an amazing layer of ice!

I'm not sure what conditions led to the pebbled appearance of the ice.  Do you know?

Here's another example (below).  The patterns and light running through the ice were stunning.  [I sure do miss cold winters in New England!]

 

One more picture, this time of several branches:

May you also find joy in the light of winter!

 

Cold and clear

 

Well, people in other parts of the world might be surprised that this seems significant, but 23°F is cold for this area!  I took this picture of our outdoor car thermometer (above) in the town of Bodega this morning at 8:07 a.m.  Brrrrrr!  And I'm guessing it will be even colder tomorrow (Thursday) morning.  We'll see!

Cold, clear conditions also made for good celestial viewing at the end of the day.  Have you been looking at the western horizon at dusk recently?

 

The waxing crescent moon and Venus are getting closer and closer together, and will be even closer to each other on December 5th.  Venus is very bright, and apparently will be at its brightest on December 6th (but you'll want to look for it on the 5th because it might be raining on the 6th).

Here's a close-up of the crescent moon.  It sets around 8:16 p.m. on December 5th, but will be visible during twilight before then.