Glazed frost, the crystal-clear trees covering the mountain. (U-hyou/雨氷)

At the end of January,  a rare phenomena had seen in Matsumoto city.
The phenomena is called glazed frost, "U-hyo/雨氷" in Japanese.

This phenomena is so rare that the people around me all said that they never see it before.



What is glazed frost, and how they occur?
I have searched about it a little.

Usually, the water will become ice when the temperature is under 0 degree.
But on certain conditions, the water's temperature can become under 0 degree without changing to ice.

When the molecule is really stable, water 's temperature can become under 0 degree.

What happen when those cold water fall from sky as a rain?
They sticks to the trees, and soon changes to ice.
If this continues, trees gets frosted.

This is the way how the glazed frost occurs.

On this day, I was driving a car from Matsumoto city to Suwa city, to the southern area of Nagano prefecture.

The weather was fine, but the color of mountain was white.
It becomes white with snow, but it was little different this day.

The color seemed a little gray, not real white.
As the frost is transparent, the color of trees and mountain can be seen through the ice.
This maybe made the color seemed like gray.

When climbing up the mountain pass, I saw a lot of frozen trees.
At this time, I realized that I'm watching an unusual something.

This place was an entrance to highland called "Takabocchi highland (高ボッチ高原)".

The entrance of Takabocchi higland.

The trees were reflecting sunlight, and seemed as if chandelier.
I'm not sure what kind of tree this is. I think it is tree of cherry blossom.
I will come back here again when spring comes and will confirm what this tree was.

On the way going back to Matsumoto city, I went to hot spring called  "Gake-no-yu Hotspring/崖の湯".

Going through the tunnel of trees and frozen roads, I have reached there.

As it was so slippery road, I was little scared driving.

At the hotel named "Yakushi-daira Akane jyuku (薬師平茜宿)", I heard that negative side of this phenomena. Thousands of trees downed by the weight of the ices stick on their branches.

Yakushi-daira Akane jyuku (薬師平茜宿)

I've saw a lots of trees bent to weird directions.
The fallen tree had cut electrical cables, some area lost electric power for few days.
A news told me that an hotel called "Myojin kan (明神館)" were trapped for few days.

News: The guests trapped by glazed frost walked to get down the mountain 

The scenery were so beautiful, but it was so cold taking picture there.

The ice cold scenery reminded me the movie "Frozen".

What I knew was that beauty of the nature is also close to danger hazard.

Thank you for reading!!
Have a nice weekend!!