Will Moving Water Freeze?
 

For you science people.. it is going to be well below freezing for a couple of days. It will also be very windy. Can the broads freeze with this combination?

I know moving rivers can freeze during extremely cold temperatures… wondering how fast the water has to move to avoid freezing.

I am sure one of you can explain!!

Island Girl (yes I am still here)
www.rattlesnakecam.com

I can't say from a scientific stance, but having seen how much the water is moving I don't see how it could be possible. The waves took out all of the ice between us and Rattlesnake, as well as on the East side of Bear. It is certainly cold enough, but with constant motion I don't see it. Next week is looking form again as well.

rivers are narrow and do freeze.... the Broads are much wider and most likely won't in 2 days.... back to the 30s and 40s Sunday.

Flashback...
 

OK I'll give it a whirl...First off all water moving or not freezes at 32 degrees fahrenheit period. Moving water however creates heat therefore takes longer to get to 32 degrees... That's my story and I'm sticking to it!! :D:D

Nice to hear from you again Island Girl!!!

Dan

So close.
Distilled water freezes at 32F once it gives up enough heat to complete the phase change.

What you are describing is Latent Heat

''Because this energy enters or leaves a system during a phase change without causing a temperature change in the system, it is known as latent heat (latent means hidden).''

Attachment 17981 with all that said, it’s time for a fire


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There are two aspects of wind effects in play here. First, wind over the surface increases heat transfer from water to air. This is especially true if the air mass is quite dry, which enhances heat loss due to evaporation. However, sufficiently strong winds create turbulence and mixing of surface water layers, so that water cooled at the very surface gets mixed rapidly with water below it, making it difficult for a skim ice layer to form.

Here is an interesting piece on ice formation in large lakes: https://www.lakechamplaincommittee.o...g-and-lake-ice

You've never seen pictures of frozen waterfalls?

Have you ever seen the supercooled water videos on youtube?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fot3m7kyLn4

That was pretty cool no pun intended! What I don’t get is I have been freezing plastic water bottles for years to use in my cooler and I have never had one not freeze as is shown in the video….why is that? :confused::confused::confused:

Dan

I have done this.
 

Back when I was still working, in the winter, on a cold winter day, as I was leaving work, I would open a bottle of water that had been sitting there all day. Before I could take a drink, the water would flash freeze solid. It didn't happen all the time, but enough to make me smile (or shake my head, depending on how thirsty I was at the time. :D)

Dave

Water generally needs an imperfection to freeze. The best way I've seen it described is that the melting point of water is 32F 0C . The freezing point is less defined. Water can stay in liquid form well below freezing. Water with nuclei in it will freeze at 32F, this is the case for lake water, since there is lots of other stuff other than water there. Clouds are a different matter, clouds can have a lot of super cooled water in them. This becomes a problem for airplanes flying through them as the droplets hit the aircraft, which is or has the nuclei necessary to start the freezing process. This can quickly ice over the airplane ultimately causing an accident.

So to answer your question, your bottled water probably has minerals or microparticles that allow the freezing process to begin, while other bottled waters may not.

The Merrimack River was Frozen over in Manchester on my way home to Ma this morning and that's had some pretty good rapids the past six months.

There were over 4 foot waves out in the big part of the lake yesterday…

https://www.wikihow.com/Supercool-Water

You probably let it chill too long.
Remember when you posted that moving water creates heat?
That is when I looked it up using google. The linked chart below shows a period when water (distilled) moves from liquid to solid, but not instantly. It has to lose that latent heat that you described as a type of movement.

ttps://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Latent_heat

I knew that adding salt lowered the freezing point - why we sell salt in the various chemical compositions. But doubted that would be the answer in a stream.

Super cooled water is what brought down Air France 447. The liquid hit the plane, and iced over the pitot tubes that measure air speed. Even the auto pilot couldn’t determine air speed. It became disabled, and when the pilots took over trying to fly manually, they had no “feel” for flying. Young pilots trained on flight simulators. Couldn’t fly by the seat of their pants.

Can't speak for lake water but in your home, if you're concerned about freezing pipes at below 0 temps, leave the water on overnight wherever you have a pipe that is close to an outside wall. Slight trickle is all it takes.

I believe that the water needs to be relatively free of impurities, and very still during the supercooling process. There is mostly likely also a window of opportunity where the water is below freezing point, but not solid. At some point (0F?, -10F?) I think it freezes no matter what in that scenario.

In regards to the original question of this thread, I think it is very common for fresh water lakes to have water that is colder than 32F and still not solid. I also think it can be difficult to predict what exactly will make those waterways start to freeze over.

I posted the water bottle example because there is a part of the equation that involves any part of the water freezing, such as along a shoreline, and giving new ice crystals something to "hang on" to. This can be shoreline ice that creeps towards the center of the water body, or surface ice that forms in calmer conditions and then allows more ice to build under it.

Or the super short answer to what would cause The Broads to freeze over is "nobody can guess for sure" :)

Lakes Freezing
 

Everyone here is right to a certain degree. Does water freeze at 32 degrees F? The simple answer is yes ASSUMING standard temperature and pressure (STP) are the ambient conditions. Otherwise, it will freeze slightly below or above 32 degrees.

When adding wind or any other turbulent factor at STP then the required temperature to make water a solid, changes downward. Most carving ice is super clear in transparency, because it is actually made in a turbulent tank that agitates the water at ~-10F, and the water eventually becomes a very clear solid.

Under very specific conditions, water can be a liquid at -42F all the way up to 705F due to its hydrogen bonding characteristics. In the case we are talking about with the lake, if the wind speed was high enough (think Mt. Washington), then the lake could still freeze, but the temperature would have to be extremely low due to the total energy of the system involved.

Since frozen water can still flow (not just floe) it would seem the logical answer is yes.

A really good article, especially "Most of the lakes’ heat energy is lost by direct convection to colder air masses sitting over the water. A light breeze facilitates heat loss from the surface by moving the just warmed air and replacing it with more cold air. On the other hand, a strong wind mixes water layers and brings up more heat stored in the deeper water."

The article also describes many other nuances of ice formation making it clear that 32 degrees isn't a magic number for water forming ice.

Super cooled water caused the incident. The idiot flying caused the crash. The book says to pitch to a few degrees nose up and set a specific engine pressure ratio (thrust, effectively) when the sensors are iced up. He pulled back the stick and had low power set. The lack of sensors caused the aircraft to be in reversion mode, so the alpha floor protection was off and he stalled the aircraft. From there he held it stalled until the aircraft captain told him to stop pulling back on the stick. He let go, the aircraft started to accelerate, at 80 knots the warnings became valid again and the started sounding. He grabbed the stick again and pulled the nose up again and held it there until the end of his life.