November 10, 2024: Cotton Candy Ice

It's been twelve years since I last saw these interesting ice formations, so long that I didn't recognize what they were.

I thought it was some kind of fungus until I reached down and touched one and it just crumbled in my fingers.  I then realized they were rime ice, like what forms on trees and structures on the top of mountains.  It occurs when super-cooled water vapor in the atmosphere bumps against a surface that's also below freezing, causing the moisture to change phase directly from a gas to a solid.  On mountains, it's clouds that cause rime ice and they often grow sideways in the direction of the wind.  

Rime Ice on the summit of Mt. Moosilauke.

The formations I saw this week were on stalks of plants less than two inches high.  My theory is that moisture in the warm, wet soil evaporated into the air, cooled to below freezing, and when it came in contact with the stalk which was also below freezing, it made the two-phase-change jump to a solid.  

The air must have been very still so it gently rotated around the stalk and grew into those neat circular patterns.  

They are tiny, and only formed on certain stems.

There's probably a scientific term for it, but I'll call it Cotton Candy Rime.  I noticed the cotton candy while admiring Jack Frost's handiwork with more typical ice crystals, the type I see every year but still find to be exquisite examples of crystalline structure.

On to the wildlife side of nature this week, the wood duck migration has slowed considerably, and the first flocks of migrating diving ducks appeared.  

Ring-necked Ducks

Like the Wood Ducks, Ring-necked Ducks like early mornings and are hard to photograph, but there were a dozen of them one morning.

One of the last groups of Wood Ducks did demonstrate how they are able to disappear so well when I witnessed them sneaking out from under low-hanging hemlock branches where they must have tucked themselves in and were totally concealed.

Look closely, there are a couple still right up against shore in the dark.

I also saw a couple of male Hooded Mergansers courting a single female in Double-dammed Pond at Hamlin, but they were too far away to get a good picture.

There's one.

Beaver activity is notable all around the lake - up at the Hamlin Town Forest, along Chemung Road, even right on our property, including this beech tree which they cut down and are in the process of gnawing off the branches to take away to their lodge.

Beavers harvesting winter food, bare branches on the trees, gray skies above, and cotton candy down below.  It's November at the lake.