Posted By On 1:01 AM
Jack Frost has a decidedly mischievous streak in his character, it seems.For when Robert Baker went outside on Wednesday morning, he found his car had been sprayed with dramatic ice graffiti.Frost had tagged the windscreen and roof with the characteristic fronds and swirls of fern frost, which forms during the coldest nights. 
'I couldn't believe what I saw,' said Mr Baker, 76, who had intended to defrost his wife's Rover 45, in Folkestone, Kent. 'I called to my wife Julie to have a look.'The pattern was one bit of graffiti he didn't mind seeing. 'Usually I would have defrosted the vehicle fairly quickly but the ice formations were stunning,' he said.'They didn't last long - they were gone as soon as the sun came out.' 
It appears the ice artists were out in force.In Oxfordshire, Stuart Dent found similar patterns on his Jaguar.Car windows and paintwork are good heat conductors and water droplets often form in very cold weather.Tiny imperfections such as scratches and dust influence their arrangement, so when they freeze, they form beautiful patterns.
Posted By On 3:12 AM
These impressive ice sculptures are part of a display for the upcoming Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival.The festival officially begins on January 5, when 800,000 tourists are expected to visit the freezing city in northern China.As well as the colourful life-sized ice buildings, which reflect traditional Chinese architecture, there is also a 160m high Father Christmas sculpture, said by organisers to be the world's largest.
Harbin, which fringes Siberia, plays host to the festival each year, but organisers have revealed that the effects of global warming are taking a toll as the snow and ice now melt more rapidly than in the past.Unseasonably warm temperatures have made the job especially challenging, said Tang Guangjun, one of the sculptors.'The weather swings between warm and cold, so it becomes very wet and slippery on the ice. It is very dangerous for us,' he said.
The display is expected to boost local trade during the economic downturn.'It can stimulate the economy and consumption. When people feel happier, they will want to spend more, so it will lift the economy of the city and even the country,' said Li Qingsheng, a tourist from Beijing.Officials in Harbin remained optimistic about the tourist outlook for the winter.
Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province on the edge of Siberia, is one of China's coldest places. Winter temperatures can drop to below minus 35 degrees Celsius.An estimated 800,000 tourists, 90 per cent of them Chinese, were expected to visit the ice festival, said Jia Yan, director of the local tourism bureau.The festival traditionally runs from mid-December to early February.
Posted By On 11:17 PM
When thinking of snowflakes and frost, your memory tends to give you subtle hints: it’s translucent, abstract, beautiful and short-lived. Nothing however, can prepare you for what abstract masterpieces icy nights may bring. Flourishes of Jack Frost’s brushstrokes envelop windscreens in fractal crystal and transform into icy autumn leaves, crystal ferns and mathematical shapes. Jack Frost is an abstract artist.Perhaps the beauty of frost lies precisely in the fact that it is ephemeral, melting into oblivion only several hours after it is created. Frost deposits form when water vapor turns directly into ice, which happens when the air temperature is at or below freezing. When the first frost crystals form a layer, new crystals will align themselves with those already there, which gives us the amazing natural patterns we see
This amazing shot could easily be mistaken for a close-up of a crystal vase. The detail and clarity are unbelieveable. It’s actually the windscreen of a car taken from the inside. Windscreens are more prone to frosting over because they cool much quicker than the other windows in the car. Being vertical, the side windows loose heat at a slower rate the windscreen, which is a larger surface area and points directly into the cool night air, making it a perfect canvas for Jack Frost.
Like little Christmas trees fallen from the sky, this shot looks cool in iced blue. Trees and plants cool off by a process called radiative cooling, which means they give off energy in the form of infrared radiation. This means they retain more heat so they don’t frost over in the same way windows do.
Wonderful natural looking landscapes are created without any direction. The patterns in this photograph look like petals of a tropical flower, and are just as fragile.
The lighting on this image gives an awesome 3D quality to the frost, but one touch and it would be gone. Still, whether touched or not, the first rays of the morning sun will melt nature’s hard word in minutes. Shame.
Taken in macro, this image shows the intricacy of frost formations, and like many others looks 3D. It also is not unlike some of the great impressionist masterpieces from the 19th century.
“We had a day of hard rain and then a sudden windy hard freeze. Made for some interesting frost patterns on the windows,” says Muffet the photographer. The wind seems to have frozen the rain in upward strokes resulting in this fantastic image. Although, it also looks like the old flock wallpaper from the 70s – not so cool.
It’s uncanny how the long arms of this frost formation are repeated in equally spaced-out chunks, like a shaft of wheat. The shape of frost crystals are influenced by the type of glass they’ve formed on, and any imperfections or scratches in the surface will play a part in the final look.
Like frosted sunflowers these frost formations look as if they’ve erupted from rain drops, their icy petals growing slowly in the cold air.
This mish-mash of crystals looks like a little like a tall ship caught in a storm. The waves to the bottom right of the image and the masts keeling sideways. Other people will probably see something different, but then that’s the beauty of art – it’s in the eye of the beholder, as they say.
'I couldn't believe what I saw,' said Mr Baker, 76, who had intended to defrost his wife's Rover 45, in Folkestone, Kent. 'I called to my wife Julie to have a look.'The pattern was one bit of graffiti he didn't mind seeing. 'Usually I would have defrosted the vehicle fairly quickly but the ice formations were stunning,' he said.'They didn't last long - they were gone as soon as the sun came out.' 
It appears the ice artists were out in force.In Oxfordshire, Stuart Dent found similar patterns on his Jaguar.Car windows and paintwork are good heat conductors and water droplets often form in very cold weather.Tiny imperfections such as scratches and dust influence their arrangement, so when they freeze, they form beautiful patterns.
