Hoar Frost At Brigantine

While I was photographing the Mute Swans By Gull Pond at the Brigantine Div., Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge early in the morning, I noticed where I was standing, the ground was covered with “Hoar Frost”.

Hoar Frost is defined as “expressing the resemblance of white feathers of frost to an old man’s beard.”

First, to produce any frost, you need water vapor (gaseous form of water) in the air over cold ground with a surface dew point at least as cold as 32 degrees. When these water vapor molecules contact a subfreezing surface, such as a blade of grass, they jump directly from the gas state to solid state, a process known as”deposition”, leading to a coating of tiny ice crystals.

All images shot with the Canon 24 – 105mm @24mm or 105mm.