Winter weather has long inspired myths and legends of mysterious creatures. In the west we have Jack Frost, and in Eastern Europe they have Ded Moroz. It seems like everywhere you go there is some creepy personification of ice and cold and snow. They live on as relics of more primitive times – but even today, more unusual winter phenomena can inspire superstition.
Weird Winter Phenomena
Light Pillars
Many have been left terrified by Light Pillars, for example, believing it was some kind of alien invasion. In reality, those people are dumb, and light pillars are simply caused by light reflecting off of ice crystals. So even a street lamp can trigger one if enough ice is around.
Ice shoves
One of the more dangerous of winter phenomenon are Ice shoves. Also known as an Ice Tsunami, it is when chunks of ice emerge from rivers and lakes, crushing almost anything in it’s path. In extreme cases, 40 foot high walls of ice have charged onto the shore like an unstoppable wave. While slow moving, it cannot be stopped, meaning your only chance is to run away. Or maybe walk. That’s the one upside. Yes, it might destroy your house, but you do have time to find a nice viewing spot. Countless buildings have been buried – countless businesses lost – and we can only imagine how many people were killed by ice shoves. Sudden and unpredictable, they can be caused by all kinds of things – from ocean currents to changes in temperature. So while more vulnerable regions have built coastal defenses, ice shoves can still be deadly.
Fallstreak Hole
Less dangerous yet far more mysterious are Fallstreak holes. For obvious reasons, they are also known as sky punches – and they require extremely specific conditions in order to form. I’m not going to give an in depth description of those conditions, because to be honest, I’d rather be dead. But in short, it has to be just cold enough for a section of cloud water to freeze, causing it to fall from the sky – but not cold enough to freeze the rest of the cloud. The end result looks like god got angry and punched the sky. So we can forgive people who mistake them for UFOs.
Penitente
Some occurrences require not only specific weather conditions, but also specific locations. Altitude is a factor, and only at extremely high altitudes do we find Penitentes. First described in 1839 by Charles Darwin, they are otherworldly natural formations of ice and snow. Like dense forests they are tightly packed together, making it risky to pass through them. Only at altitudes above 4000 meters are they found, though – high enough for them to form even in the desert. As such, snow evaporates unevenly, and incredibly slowly, resulting in spike like structures. Some of the ones found in the Andes mountains can be up to 20 feet high – but they have also recently been detected on Pluto – where thanks to a thin atmosphere, can easily be 600 feet tall.
Thunder Snow
ThunderSnow is weird. And yes, it’s just like it sounds. Thunder and lightning while it snows. ThunderSnow is so rare you’ve probably never heard of it – and there’s a reason for that. Thunder and lightning occur thanks to an mismatch – usually triggered when the ground temperature is much warmer than in the clouds. But during a snowstorm, the temperatures down below are meant to be pretty cold. So how could these two things co-incide? Well, they hardly ever do. When it does, ThunderSnow seems to happen during particularly intense snowfall. You can image ancient humans barely surviving a blizzard, only to be stuck by lightning like the morons they were. ThunderSnow is more common in Japan and Scandinavia – but even there, it’s an occasional thing.
Other strange winter Phenomena include snow Rollers – when wind rolls up especially soft patches of snow into spools. Naturally occurring ice balls. And Frost Quakes – when underground water freezes and expands, causing the earth below us to break up with a huge cracking noise.