If you've ever wondered what half an inch of ice looks like when it coats a branch, you won't get much better than this. Ice forms when the air temperature at the ground hovers around freezing.
The falling water doesn't have a chance to turn to snow and comes down as rain, but only just. when it hits an object, like a branch, it crystalizes and turns to ice. Sometimes almost instantly. Every subsequent raindrop adds layers to it. This is the end result.
I've only ever seen ice like this a few times in my life (I took this photo in Indiana back in Dec) Here in Wisconsin, we only very rarely get ice. We're usually far enough north that all our winter weather comes down as snow. On those rare occasions that it is warm enough to rain, we usually just get rain.
So why am I blogging about ice? Because I didn't do much at all today. I didn't even get outside. Lazy Sundays I guess........
It'll be interesting birding this week. We're supposed to have an arctic cold front come though on Mon night. The high temp on Tues is not supposed to go above 0. Wed won't be any better with a high of 5 and Thurs, the high temp will be -5. Now, this is the ambient air temp I'm talking about. On Tues, we're supposed to have winds of 10-20MPH. This will produce wind chills of 30-40 degrees BELOW zero! Brrrr. Now THAT is cold!
On Fri, I'm supposed to run a Golden Eagle survey for The National Eagle center
That will be interesting since the high is supposed to be zero degrees.
Not quite as cold as on the Golden Eagle trip of last year, but cold enough to freeze your fingers. :D
Today's blog of the week is Fort Ephemera.
Michael is an amazing photographer. He has posted to truly spectacular photos here on his Flickr page.
Happy Birding!
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