ROANOKE, Va. – If you've been driving around and admiring the snow-capped mountains recently, you may not realize that they're capped by something else - rime ice. We've had a nice bird's eye view on our Poor Mountain sky cam in recent days.
How does rime ice form?
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Rime ice forms in a unique way, differently than hoarfrost. It starts out as a 'supercooled' water droplet. This basically means that the water is below freezing, but has yet to crystallize into ice.
Wind out of the west guides these droplets toward the mountaintops. At this point, the supercooled water can crystallize on contact with the trees, ground, or whatever it touches.
Dave Carroll, an instructor at the College of Natural Resources and Environment at Virginia Tech, shared these pictures with us on Bald Knob.