Before winter has hopped the big train to get to the southern hemisphere for the change of seasons, I still have a cache of winter shots from Copper Harbor that I want to get on the blog. This photo shows what amounts to a frosty morning in the woods up in the Keweenaw. It's not frost, as you might guess, but a sort of rime ice, though it was actually half snow and half ice. But there are word differences that need resolving. What does the phrase "rime ice" apply to? What is shown in the Okemos photo from the previous post, I have read, is called by some "rime ice", though I have always called what is shown there "frost", or "hoar frost". Some say that what I and others call "rime ice", the ice that is driven by wind and forms on trees or buildings, is properly called "glaze ice". I will have to investigate that language issue further. But I like the phrase glaze ice and will put it to use.
This photo was taken very near the shores of Lake Medora, near the boat launch. The lake is about four miles west of CH along US-41. The wind often drives across the lake and slashes into the trees. If it's snowing at all, the wind will build up a thick coating of snow or semi-ice on the side of the trees facing the wind. Along the shore of Lake Superior, when the lake is still mostly open except for shore ice, the wind will drive spray from the lake waves onto the shoreside trees and create rime ice (as it has been often called) or "glaze ice" on the windward side. But the trees in this shot are actually pasted with glaze snow, though upon inspection I found that the wind had so tightly compressed the snow against the bark that it was nearly a fluffy form of ice. As my Dad mentioned in his comment to my previous post, CH does not often get hoar frost like that shown in the post about Okemos, three hundred miles south of CH (as the crow flies; it's 550 miles as the automobile drives). What the CH area almost always gets is glaze snow and glaze ice.
This photo was taken very near the shores of Lake Medora, near the boat launch. The lake is about four miles west of CH along US-41. The wind often drives across the lake and slashes into the trees. If it's snowing at all, the wind will build up a thick coating of snow or semi-ice on the side of the trees facing the wind. Along the shore of Lake Superior, when the lake is still mostly open except for shore ice, the wind will drive spray from the lake waves onto the shoreside trees and create rime ice (as it has been often called) or "glaze ice" on the windward side. But the trees in this shot are actually pasted with glaze snow, though upon inspection I found that the wind had so tightly compressed the snow against the bark that it was nearly a fluffy form of ice. As my Dad mentioned in his comment to my previous post, CH does not often get hoar frost like that shown in the post about Okemos, three hundred miles south of CH (as the crow flies; it's 550 miles as the automobile drives). What the CH area almost always gets is glaze snow and glaze ice.
1 comment:
When snow appears on the side of a tree such as in your picture, it isd usually a north wind and I call that "Copper Country Moss." Wonderful pictures, Ben.
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