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Ice Formations on Dead Wood -- Haareis or Hair Ice Dr. James
R. Carter, Professor Emeritus Geography-Geology
Department Illinois
State University, Normal, IL 61790-4400 |
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(This is a web page created in 2009 and is
being retained because it has some good photos. For the more current web page
by this author go to: http://www.jrcarter.net/ice/hair/
) In 2006 Geoff Gaynor of Wales sent me an
email with photos of some ice formations he had observed. Those photos
appear on the master page. Geoff had seen my web pages and wanted
to know what he had found. The ice in his photos was similar
to my ice flowers but is on woody material on the ground. I
think Geoff was the first person I asked if I could use his photos on my web
pages. Geoff gave me permission and that set a
direction for these pages. Thus, I have been able to
show interesting formations of ice that I have not seen. This is
particularly true of Hair Ice featured here which I have yet to see. Subsequently I have learned that this form
of ice is called Haareis or Hair Ice, in German and
English. That name is most appropriate describing the hair-like
nature of those fine needles. This photo by bobbi
fabellano from the Olympic Peninsula of Washington,
USA, shows this hair-like texture. Note that in this and other photos,
the hairs of ice do not grow from linear fissures in a stem but rather appear
to come out of pores in the wood. As such they are similar
to hair on a head.
In the photo above there appears to
be no bark on the piece of wood. The photo below shows ice growing
only where there is no bark. It has been suggested that the growth of ice
may push out and break off old bark. This photo was taken by Joachim Mittendorf in the Harz Mountains of Germany. That
location is significant because in 1884 Prof. Schwalbe described similar
ice he found in these same mountains
Mittendorf in an email of March 2007 wrote:
"Most of the numerous white branches had very thin and up to 3 cm long
"hairs." They really looked like the thin white hair of a
human being." Here the 'hair-like' nature of
this ice is quite evident and the comparison to white hair of human beings is
appropriate. Below is another photo of Haareis or Hair Ice from Joaquim Mittendorf.
I included this photo because it is different from the other photos in that
it shows a dense array of ice but the
individual hairs of ice are still distinct. Note that in this
photo the ice is on a dark piece of wood and that below that piece of wood we
can see daylight reflecting off the leaves. This demonstrates the
wood does not have to be on the ground.
In her email to me bobbi
fabellano called this type of ice "silk
frost," a name she heard from others, She
proposed the name "cotton candy frost" which is quite appropriate
in many ways. While the term frost is used frequently as part of
such names, these ice formations are not a product of frost. Frost
comes about by moisture from the air being deposited on surfaces. As
such frost is quite amorphous and would never appear as fine needles like we
see here. Hair Ice is ice that grows outward from the surface of the
wood, as super-cooled water emerges from the wood, freezes and adds to the
hairs from the base. The photo below is from bobbi fabellano who found
this on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, USA. This photo portrays an
array of ice like a flower. Much of the appeal of this photo is the
color at the center which is from the diffusion of sunlight.
Compare the ice in this photo with that
below, from Rick Eppler of Vancouver Island, Canada. In both cases the
ice seems to emerge and spread out from a central area. In both cases
the needles or hairs of ice stay as individual strands while the growth of
ice from plant stems more commonly fuse together to form ribbons or
continuous surfaces.
Rick Eppler is also the source of the photo
below. Both of these are from Vancouver Island
on the west coast of Canada. This is very close to the area in
Washington where bobbi got her photos. I
included both of these photos because they are very
attractive and give great insight into this form of ice.
While I have argued that Hair Ice does not fuse
together like Ice Ribbons or Ice Flowers that grow from plant stems, the two
photos below from Rick suggest this is not always the case. In these
two photos the ice does seem to form a ribbon. As I have studied these
photos, I think they may be of the same growth of ice.
In this series of web pages showing
the growth of ice with diurnal or daily freeze/thaw activities, we
see ice growing from pieces of dead wood, from plant stems,
from soil and from rocks. This ice has a common base
but the form varies with the media from which it grows. Haareis
or Hair Ice from the Past The first reference I know about this type
of ice growths appeared in a report on the meeting of the Physical Society in
Berlin, in the March 13, 1884, issue of Nature Prof. Schwalbe
describes flowers growing from rotten twigs lying on the ground in the
Harz Mountains as ". . . ice-excrescences of soft, brilliant, asbestine
appearance, and uncommonly delicate to the touch. . . ."
Prof. Schwalbe brought some of these withered and rotten twigs with him to In a later
editions of Nature
there were a series of letters reporting on ice formations and reacting to
earlier letters. Most of these reports relate to what was obviously
needle ice but in the January 1, 1885 issue B. Woodd
Smith tells of a friend who “. . . picked up a piece
of a dead beech-branch which was covered with filamentous ice, such as is
described by the Duke of Argyll and others.” This person found the ice
reappeared again the next morning when it was left out over
night. (p. 194). Prof. Alfred Wegener in 1918 in Die Naturwissenschaften (6/1, pp. 598-601) wrote
about seeing this type of ice in two different places. In the article
entitled "Haareis auf morshem
holz" he had three photographs and two
sketches. Wegener hypothesized a connection between the formation of
the ice and the presence of fungi. This is the climatologist Wegener
who went on to fame for proposing the concept of Continental Drift. A. Hillefors
wrote about “Needle Ice on Dead and Rotten Branches” in Weather, 1976
(31, pp. 163-168). He observed Haareis
in Sweden and notes the ice occurred on branches of beech. Hillefors as a meteorologist attempted to relate the
formation of the ice to the synoptic weather preceeding
the event. We now know it is more a product of diurnal freeze/thaw,
which may occur under many synoptic weather situations. Hillefors noted that when such ice forms in soil it is
known as "pipkrakes" in Sweden and as
"kammeis" in Germany. He considered
his ice on beech to be a peculiar form of pipkrakes,
or a variation of Needle Ice. Indeed, it is in the sense that it is
another form of the growth of ice with diurnal freeze/thaw
processes. Hillefors referenced
only an 1880 report by the Duke of Argyll about ice on plant stems
and missed the papers by Schwable 1884 and Wegener
1918 on Haareis in Germany and France. So, this is far from a new
phenomenon. In spring 2007 I received an email from Joachim Mittendorf in Sweden with a photo of a similar occurrence
of ice on wood he saw in the Harz Mountains of Germany, where Prof. Schwalbe
saw ice more than a century earlier. I was beginning to believe that Haareis occurred only in Europe until I received the
photos from bobbi fabellano
in the Pacific Northwest. Then I heard from Brenda Callan and Rick
Eppler, both from coastal British Columbia, Canada. As a
geographer I want to know where each type of ice is found. Thus it appears that Hair Ice is found only in the Pacific
Northwest part of North America and western Europe. And speaking of geography, someone put me
on to two photos of such ice formations on the Geograph web site in the UK where the
goal is to have photos from every grid square. The links to these
photos are http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/320718
and http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/320726 These two photos are from near Inverness,
Scotland. There is no doubt these photos are showing the same type of ice
seen in Wales, Germany, Sweden and the Pacific Northwest of North
America. As spring 2008 approached I received a gold
mine on this type of ice formation. Gerhard Wagner of Switzerland
pointed me to web pages showing many views of such formations and to two of
his articles available as pdf files at http://www.wagnerger.ch/daten/haareis.pdf
and http://www.wagnerger.ch/daten/haarstaengel.pdf
The more comprehensive article is that
of Gerhart Wagner and Christian Matzler,
"Haareis auf morschem
Laubholz als biophysickalisches Phanomen"
or "Hair Ice of Rotten Wood of Broadleaf Trees -- A Biophysical
Phenomenon" This 31-page paper is downloadable from http://www.iap.unibe.ch/publications/download/3152/de/ The paper is in German with an
English abstract and contains many photos and diagrams which add insights.
The captions are in both German and English. Wagner and Matzler,
2009, "Haareis -- Ein seltenes
biophysikalisches Phanomen
im Winter" Naturwissenschaftliche
Rundschau, 62, Heft 3, pp.
117-123, is the definitive paper on this topic. Summarizing
the current state of knowledge they state they have
found Haareis on wood from beech and oak, and
reference others who have found such ice on hazel wood, maple and alder
pieces. Note that all of these are deciduous trees. There are some good images on a number of web sites. Der Karlsruher
Wolkenatlas has five photos of Haareis. The Natur Galerie von Paul Esser
has a nice collection of photos, #2 of which is Haareis.
It is my interpretation that the ice in this photo is not as long as in many photos, but in this example the wood
seems to stand vertical and may be part of a tree that still has some
life. The Waldwissen.net
web site has two photos of Haareis on pieces of
wood on the ground. In these two photos the threads of ice are much
longer than in other images I have seen. Then I received a photo from the
Netherlands showing a good example of Haareis.
So, another country in Europe is home to these ice formations.
Interestingly, a few weeks before I had received photos from the Netherlands
of Ice Flowers on plant stems. Those are the first examples of Ice
Flowers I have seen from Europe. Thank goodness for the Internet and digital
cameras for they let us exchange information about these attractive ice
formations. Please take on the task of looking for ice when the
freeze/thaw processes are underway. Feel free to contact me at [email protected]
if you see any ice of this nature in your early morning outings. Return
to the master page of Ice
Formations with Diurnal Freeze/Thaw Cycles |
