Hair ice

This is a pretty cool phenomenon that I hadn't come across before. It's featured in this month's Physics Today, but sadly subscriber only. Wikipedia has nifty photos, though. Take a look...it's wild, and I can't effectively describe it.

Anybody come across it in the woods?

I think I have seen that before. Sadly I did not care enough to photograph it. :-(

Can't find them now, but Tom and Laurie Rankin posted or "liked" pics recently from a Catskills hike.
Theirs look exactly like those in the Wikipedia link.

Looks similar to needle ice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needle_ice which I have seen many times.

The key difference seems to be that hair ice grows from damp dead wood and needle ice grows from damp soil. Both produce long thin crystals.

Doug

DougPaul said:

Looks similar to needle ice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needle_ice which I have seen many times.

The key difference seems to be that hair ice grows from damp dead wood and needle ice grows from damp soil. Both produce long thin crystals.

Doug

Click to expand...

I guess I saw some needle ice twisted like hair on Monday while doing Canty Trail

DougPaul said:

Looks similar to needle ice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needle_ice which I have seen many times.

The key difference seems to be that hair ice grows from damp dead wood and needle ice grows from damp soil. Both produce long thin crystals.

Doug

Click to expand...

That was my thought too. I do see that fairly often. Can't say I've ever seen it that fine and curly though like the Wiki photos.

Hair ice found on Lonesome Lake Trail

I've often seen needle ice (which I called extruded ice, until today). Here's a hairy example on the Tully Trail last New Year's Day. If I ever saw hair ice, I'd surely photograph it. From the same hike is something I call contour ice, because it looks like a contour map, perhaps due to repeated freeze/thaw cycles.

I call this "ground frost" because it forms from the moisture in the soil (or a damp log), not from the moisture in the air.

Couple of examples:
Ground frost:
http://www.davidalbeck.com/photos/2011/percival/i009.jpg

Log frost:
http://www.davidalbeck.com/photos/2010/liberty/i002.jpg

You'll notice that the second example is specifically of "hair ice", and, contra wikipedia, formed on a log from a conifer.

First saw it in the Ossipees some years back, then a couple times since on other occasions. I also sort of remember other, really good pics on VFTT in the past?

Yes, we did see 3 examples of wood ice recently, never having seen it before this fall! The ground kind we see all the time.