Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters,

and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

John Lubbock

What happens when nature meets extreme cold? There are plenty weird things, from ice volcanoes to slurpee waves, can be seen when temperatures dip below freezing.

Take a look at these mind-blowing weather phenomena experienced by our planet.

1 – Brinicles, deathly ice finger

Brinicles

Brinicles are also known as an ice stalactite and they are found in both the Arctic and the Antarctic areas. That implies that in winter, the air temperature above the sea ice can below -20C whereas the sea water is about -1.9C. So, the brinicle is formed beneath the sea ice when a flow of extremely cold saline mass of water comes into an ocean warmer water.

2 – Snow donuts

Snow donuts

Snow donut is a rare weather phenomenon, which usually occurs when the winds blow a chunk of snow along the ground. When the chunk comes to rest, the centre is blown away, resulting in a snow donut.

3 – Frost flowers

Frost flowers

This rare and beautiful weather phenomenon is usually witnessed during early winters or autumn mornings. It takes place when thin layers of ice are pushed out from the stems of plants resulting into spectacular frozen petals.

4 – Cryoseismic Booms

Cryoseismic booms

Cryoseismic booms, also called “frost quakes,” happen when the atmospheric temperature drops very rapidly. When that happens, pockets of water trapped inside the ground freeze quickly. And when water freezes, it expands. That expansion stresses the earth around the pockets of ice, and eventually the pressure causes the ground to crack with a massive noise.

5 – Fumaroles

Fumaroles

To see this unique natural phenomenon we need to visit South Pole, it happens when  the heat of the inner earth meets the frozen air. Bizarre ice towers, stretching up to the air, are called fumaroles. When heated gas leaks out from volcano it forms ice caves which later getting filled with steam. That steam rises upwards, melts the snowpack and then immediately freezes when it hits the cold air. This process creates huge hollow towers of ice that look really bizarre.

6 – Ice Volcanoes

Ice volcanoes

Scientific name of ice volcano is cryovolcano, it is basically type of volcano that erupts hot gases, some of them toxic, some of them just warm air with various amounts of steam and CO2, instead of spew lava. Cryomagma or ice-volcanic melt are usually liquids and can form plumes, but can also be in vapour form.

7 – Slurpee waves

Frozen waves. Photo © Jonathan Nimerfroh

This incredible picture was taken by surfer and photographer Jonathan Nimerfroh in Nantucket, Massachusetts when ocean managed to freeze a little bit. Typically ice doesn’t form close to shore, but the cold air froze tiny pellets of ice no bigger than a kernel of corn in massive amounts, with the action of the waves bringing them to land. The end result was waves of wet, freezing slush that looked like they could have come out of a Slurpee machine. The bizarre phenomenon didn’t last long, but it was definitely unique.

source:tested