What is the true nature of the rare phenomenon in which sloppy ice wraps around the railing?



An image of winding ice wrapped around a railing pipe was posted on Twitter. According to a post by Hacker News, a social news site that talked about this, this phenomenon of strip-shaped ice growth is called 'ribbon ice'.

Twitter user Crotchety Carl (@CJF_NC) said on February 6, 2022, 'After yesterday's snow and ice storm, this morning a friend living in the neighborhood found a cool shape of ice on the deck. I tweeted. The image he posted shows a thin, thin strip of ice that winds and stretches from the railing.



Another Twitter user replied to this tweet, citing an article dealing with ' frost flower '. 'Frost flower' is a phenomenon in which the water sucked up by the roots of a plant called Collinsonia japonica freezes and becomes like a flower.


by

Justin Leigh Shaw

It looks different from the ice on the railing, but it is similar in that it is a naturally occurring, winding ice.


by

Marvin Smith

In a thread on Hacker News that talked about the above tweet, a note was posted saying 'Isn't it something called ribbon ice?' Another post features an article by James Carter, a former professor at Illinois State University, who used the same phenomenon to make ice.

You can see the pattern of the experiment conducted by Mr. Carter from the following article.

How is the ice ribbon that wraps around in the air created naturally? --GIGAZINE



Carter, who experimented with strips of ice from crevices in metal pipes, explained the principle: 'While making many rods of ice, I came to understand how the ice came out of the iron fence. I feel. First, the water in the pipe freezes in the night, then the next day it melts slightly and softens and floats in the pipe, and then the next night in the pipe again. When it freezes, the frozen water expands and is pushed out of the weld seam. '



There are other pictures on the internet of ice growing from a metal fence.


by

Sheri Terris

There is also a movie that captures how the ice grows.

Extruding Ice From A Steel Pipe-Time Lapse-YouTube


A pipe with a hole at the tip.



Ice came out of the hole ...



It stretched to wrap around in the air.

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in Note, Posted by log1l_ks