Photos: Rime ice on the trees

Soft rime ice on a tree, Wurster Park, Sunday, February 4, 2024. Photo by Fritz Swanson.

by Sara Swanson

Manchester woke up Sunday morning to what could have been a scene out of a storybook, with fog and soft rime ice coating the trees. Rime ice is caused by freezing water droplets in a very cold fog and attaching to objects. When it is windy, hard rime ice is formed, which can be thick, heavy, and dangerous, but when there is no wind, soft rime ice with delicate, needle-like structures is formed and that’s what we had Sunday morning. Soft rime ice is similar in appearance to and often confused with hoar frost. Hoar frost occurs on clear nights instead of foggy ones and is the result of water vapor turning straight to ice when encountering super-cooled objects, skipping over the liquid stage (water droplets) altogether. 

Soft rime ice coats the trees in Wurster Park, Sunday, February 4, 2024. Photo by Fritz Swanson.

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.