Hoar Frost under the Northern Sky

#3

01.03.10

The most common question I am asked by folks in the lower-48 states is "Why Alaska?"  The answer is difficult to articulate, and "Why not?" never seems to suffice.  I guess for those of us who live here and love it, there are innumerable reasons why life in the Arctic/Subarctic holds us here, and happily at that.  One of those reasons for me is the hoar frost, which paints a winter's paradise.  While this frost is by no means unique to Alaska, it occurs commonly enough here that we probably have equal days with it as without it during winter.

It occurs when vapor (fog) skips the "turn to liquid before becoming solid" routine and sublimates directly to ice on supercooled objects, usually of a small diameter like the branch of a tree, a blade of grass, the links of a chain-linked fence, etc.  These objects get 'supercooled' relative to the air around them when warm air escapes upward on cold, clear nights.  The results can be breathtakingly beautiful.  


The hoar frost (also called "air frost" or "radiation frost" wasn't as thick this morning as some mornings; but it was pretty enough to make me want to take Co-pilot Q out for a drive.  I got this pic right around noon, and within a mile of my home, facing directly west as the sun sat low on the horizon in the southern sky.  It has not been enhanced by digital processing whatsoever; though I did crop out my vehicle and an ugly fence at the bottom of the pic.  It goes without saying that a finer lens on a higher megapixel digital camera would give a more powerful shot; but this is still quite pretty considering the humble camera that captured it.  Well, in my mind it's very pretty, anyway.

The soundtrack for this post is 'Northern Sky' by Nick Drake, in honor of our frequent hoar frosts here in the far north.  If you're not in to folk music, you're in the majority.  But I fear you're missing out!  If you ever consider giving it a try and wanted to jump in with an absolute icon of the genre, please give Nick Drake a try.  He was from England and tragically died at just 26 years of age in an Elavil overdose (an tricyclic antidepressant, though I prescribe it for painful peripheral neuropathy sometimes).  This track comes off his second album, Bryter Layter.  The tune is all-the-more special to me because it features John Cale on piano / celesta / organ / harpsichord and viola.  Cale, from Wales, was a founding member of one of my favorite bands, the Velvet Underground of Andy Warhol / the Factory fame.  If in yesterday's post I praised the 7 minute, 56 second version of 'Bye Bye Blackbird' by Miles Davis and John Coltrane as the greatest musical recording of all time; perhaps it is John Cale's emotional rendition of Leonard Cohen's (yet another of my favorite musicians!) 'Hallelujah' that may be my all-time favorite recorded song featuring vocals.  (Admittedly, if you follow this blog long enough you'll find I have a long list of songs referred to as "Best Song Ever"... so I guess in my mind it's more of a Tier than a pedestal built for one.) Sadly, the song 'Hallelujah' was featured on the soundtrack of "Shrek", which nearly devastated me... but regardlessly the song shines forever on.  None of which is meant to detract from the beauty of Nick Drake's 'Northern Sky'.  I hope you find it lending a mellow, contented vibe to your day.


{Sigh}  I've just noted that this post has leaned more heavily on the music than the photo.  Maybe I should have started a music blog, instead?  Nah... it's been too much fun combining the two here.


Runners-up:

These are 4 other photos I shot today.  I liked 1 and 2 quite a bit; but for some reason they are really blurred out at the bottom right quadrant.  I actually checked the iPhone lens to see if there was grease or something there, but there wasn't.  Perhaps it was just cold?  The so-called "fata morgana"? (It was around -6F at 9 a.m. this morning; I'm not sure what it was when the pics were taken.)  These have not been digitally processed, either... the blue sky was just that blue.  For these three I was facing north.  Option 4 is included merely because it shows the gorgeous view I get to enjoy from my living room 365 days a year.  The "yellow" is actually white; the hoar frost almost looks like leaves in the photo.  I attribute that to shooting through the window?  Most every tree we have in Anchorage is either birch or pine; you see both in these photos.

Two older (non-iPhone camera) hoar frost photos:

I shot these one day in early 2008 at the Loussac Library in midtown Anchorage.  I was using my trusty old Nikon 8800 point-and-shoot.  It shows how heavy the air frost can become.  Beautiful.  I can't get enough of it, obviously.

Until tomorrow... thanks for looking, listening, and reading.  CCE