It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Winter!

I woke this morning to soft snow, silent snow, big fluffy flakes gently wafting down, a Christmas-card-beautiful snow that clung to every twig of our neighborhood trees.

These fluffy tufts made the scarlet Winterberries in my yard look even more holiday-festive than usual.

This snow won't last, of course, since the daytime temps this week are predicted to rise into the mid-30s. And unless it truly melts to clear water, the snow has probably canceled any chances we will have this winter to enjoy the kind of crystal-clear ice that sometimes forms on our lakes.  I was elated just yesterday to find that kind of clear ice forming along the shore of Moreau Lake's back bay.

The water on the main part of the lake was still wide open, as was much of the water in the middle of the back bay.  But the ice that had formed close to shore was clear as glass and almost as smooth.

As I expected, the ice was still too thin to walk on, which I discovered with my first tentative steps. Crack!

No matter, I could still enjoy a few of the ice's marvels while walking the sandy shore.  A few methane bubbles had already started to form and be captured in the ice. Over time and as the ice continues to thicken, subsequent frozen bubbles will appear like of stacks of silver coins.  The gas they contain arises as the underwater vegetation decomposes.  (This blog post from 2015 has some photos of how beautiful those silvery stacks can be.)

I was intrigued by the lacy pattern that formed around this small hole in the ice as water oozed up and spread across the frozen surface. I wonder if its surprisingly blue color would fade beneath a grayer sky than the radiantly blue one of this day.

As the lake began to freeze the night before, every ripple of the wind-swept surface was preserved as rippled and wrinkled ice. Such fascinating formations!

I also stopped by the small creek that enters the lake after it passes beneath this bridge. We had had significant rain a few days ago, so I wondered if there would be water or ice in the creek.

Just a few dribbles of liquid water remained of what must have been a significant flow just a day or so before.  Thin sheets of ice resting on empty space gave evidence, though, that water had collected in this creekbed very recently.  I am always fascinated by how these gracefully and curvaceously striped plates of ice can capture signs of the flow and incremental freezing of that water, even when no water remains to flow beneath them.

On my way out of the park, I noticed the signature arching siliques of some Green Rock Cress (Borodinia missouriensis) bending over the side of the road, the pale dimpled pods quite visible against the dark shade of the background woods.

Since Green Rock Cress is a Threatened species in New York State, I'm always delighted to find an uncharted population of this rare plant.  I pulled over to count how many individuals made up this population, locating at least 20 specimens in the stretch of roadside pictured here.  

Green Rock Cress is actually easier to spot in the winter, when its pale and abundant seed pods are much more evident than are its small green leaves and tiny white flowers during the growing season.  So this was just one more example of the delightful surprises we can still find on a walk in the wintry woods.  Or along the shore of an icy lake.