* terra Environment - Flash Freezing

[Artytom]

Clif mentions flash freezing in a report from 2016.

 

Here is a short video of a pike eating a bass, frozen in mid-bite on a lake somewhere in the USA. It looks as though the bass was out of the water and the pikes mouth was just closing around it when the water suddenly froze around them. The ice looks close to 12 inches thick.

 

It seems impossible unless flash freezing occurred and it reminded me of Clifs warning.

 

Here's the video.

 

[jdurand]

If the water was supercooled it could happen, it requires very specific conditions but you can chill water below freezing and then the first disturbance causes a flash freeze.

 

The same happens with boiling, you can heat water in a very clean cup to above the boiling point in a microwave, then when you grab the cup to remove it the water all flashes into boiling which can lead to a bad burn.

[lissa]

the bass was already a goner, but imagine the surprise for the pike......

[jdurand]

Another option is the pike died from too much food and the water just froze around him.

[cowpoke]

I've seen plenty of fish dead from half swallowing another fish that was too big to be completely swallowed. That is a very normal occurrence. I think they were most likely both dead, but how they got in a position like that, with the bass sticking out of the water is a bit of a quandary. Fish will often float soon after dying, and then sink for a matter of days before once again floating, it has to do with gasses being produced as they rot. These fish both look fresh enough for it to have been that first time float, shortly after dying, but maybe the bass died first, and when it floated it pulled the pike up. Maybe there was an ice fishing hole there and the pike was in it's last gasps, trying to free itself when it broke through the supercooled water in the ice fishing hole. It would be an odd string of events, but if it wasn't odd, it would be something everyone had seen before. I don't think there is any need to consider a new kind of flash freeze as the cause.

[jdurand]

[ theory ]

Water starts to freeze, pike tale in water. First layer freezing locks fish in place and then deeper freezing presses in and down on pike causing it to bend straighter.

[ /theory ]

[Joy in Hawaii]

OR....it really was a flash freeze. I just think that trying to explain away all of the weird things that will be happening is a useless and frustrating task. It's gonna be way more fun to just sit back and enjoy the show.

 

But then again, everybody should have at least one nervous breakdown. If only to find out what your personal limits really are. It's time to earn that tinfoil hat ya been wearin' all these years!

[Greenmeadow]

Aren't fish kind of like lizards? They just slow down and stop as it gets colder. I have gold fish in my horse trough. They do fine over winter in it. The trick with outdoor goldfish is to not feed the below 50 degrees. Their gut slows down and they can't digest.

 

A fish freezing with something in its mouth sounds odd. Unless it had been holding the other fish in its mouth for a long time, until they slowly froze.

 

The bit clif shared was a about a frozen Fox. It appeared to fall through the ice trying to cross a stream. I assumed it drowned and froze.

 

I do believe you can get sudden down drafts of cold though. We have been getting some odd weather and snow in low elevations this year. A wave of cold air comes over the mountains and drops through warmer air picking up moisture and creating snow. What seems odd is that some of it has been very localized. Driving down the highway a small section us snowing and then you drive into a section that is 10 degrees warmer.

 

ETA I just watched the video. I'm not sure how you would produce the effect of the fish half frozen out of the water without flash freezing.

[JimmyV]

Reminds me of a time when I was 17 yrs. old in the movie theater balcony with Mary J.

T:winter:here was this sudden freeze.