It’s –27 degrees Fahrenheit, schools have been closed, the post office called off mail delivery, and many people have decided to stay home from work so what is there left to do but stay cozy inside and watch a movie or read a book? For me it just means going out and doing things that you can really only do in temperatures this cold. Since everyone was off from school we decided to warm up some water and see how long it takes to freeze in this type of cold.  Throwing it up in the air, it takes maybe a second before that water almost explodes into ice crystals and blow away. There are many videos available to watch as people do this but watching with your own eyes really shows how fascinating and amazing it is that water transforms at this fast of a speed.  The water has to be warm enough for this to work or it will just fall back to the ground and create ice balls instead.

With the sun being out and it being so cold I decided to experiment with rose flowers and see what it’s like to sort of flash freeze them with some water droplets and see what happens. I placed them in the snow to given this extremely white background to really set off the color which seems to be preserved in the cold. I let them freeze over a period of 20 minutes or so before taking pictures. During the winter I try to keep a camera in the cold so it’s ready all of the time. When it gets this cold I remove the batteries so they will keep a charge and put them in when ready to shoot. You can use a phone camera for a few minutes but it will likely shut down in cold like this and take a while to warm back up to function again.

I’ve seen some incredible patterns in bubbles frozen and decided to give that a try. It was not hugely successful but I did get a shot or two of patterns developing as the bubble froze. I was surprised how quickly these patterns developed and then disappeared. There was a minute or so to get a photograph before the bubble began to completely freeze and disintegrate. Something I may try at warmer temperatures and see if it last longer.

Another interesting thing to look at is frost forming on windows and doors. The patterns of these ice crystals are so diverse and abstract. I tend to get lost in a picture like this just following the different branches and seeing each design and how they all work together. Does one change how another develops and it takes the moisture away? Is there a difference created by very small temperature differences? Something I should try in the future is to breathe lightly on a window and see if there are differences in how hard I breath. Does it create different patterns or just fog up the entire window pane and freeze? Something for another cold winter day.