The Good Cold · Plates
Frost, up close.
Forty pictures of what water does on a cold night when nobody is supervising. Ten kinds, four plates, no assembly.
Frost and low sun
Ice bends and splits light much the way glass does. A low winter sun comes in at the angle that shows it, which is the one thing a low winter sun does well.
Hoar on a twig
Hoar grows on clear, still nights, when water vapor in the air turns straight to ice on anything colder than it is. No drop of water is involved. A breeze can knock the whole arrangement off.
WoodcutPicture
Frost ferns
Frost on a cold surface starts at a scratch or a speck of dust, then branches outward. Nothing about it knows what a fern is.
LinePicture
Night flurry
Snow looks white because it scatters light in every direction. After dark it takes whatever color the nearest light is offering.
Frost feathers
Each frond keeps forking because its tips stick out into the moist air and get to the water first. The tips grow, so they stick out further. It is not a complicated plan.
LinePicture
Stellar dendrites
Six arms because water molecules lock together in a hexagon. Arms that match because they grew through the same air at the same time. The classic star shape forms best near 5°F.
Ice spears
Water expands as it freezes. If a surface ices over and leaves one small hole, the water below gets pushed up through it, freezes at the rim, and builds a spike. Birdbaths do this without being asked.
Needles in fog
Hoar likes calm. Rime likes fog and wind: droplets colder than freezing, still liquid, turn to ice on whatever they hit. It builds toward the wind, so a tree can tell you where the weather came from.
Hoar stars
Under a magnifier, hoar is mostly small flat plates and needles, each catching light at its own angle. That is the sparkle. Nobody has to polish it.
Window frost
It takes a cold pane and a humid room. Double glazing has mostly ended the practice, so anyone still getting this indoors should look at their storm windows, and then at their heating bill.
The four plates
Four of the pictures above, traced down to line and flat color. Each one is drawn as a vector, so it holds up at the size of a wall. Three of the pictures above have a slider, if you would like to watch it happen.
Images and line art by The Good Cold, made for this page to show how frost behaves. They are not records of a particular morning in a particular town. For the real thing, go outside before the sun does. The Field Guide has the rest of the instructions.