Impressing Clouds, Baltic Sea, February 16th, 2014

Warnemünde at the Baltic Sea, which is situated close to Rostock, is a very popular beach for people from Berlin and Hamburg during summer. In Rostock there is a big harbor and ferries leave regularly for Denmark and Sweden.

On February 16 a strong wind blew from the South-West, even this was nothing compared to the devastating storms in the UK and Western Europe. However weather patterns seem also here a bit unusual: there was an impressing sky the whole day, but in the afternoon a real amazing shower could be seen from the shore. The shower didn’t reach Warnemünde where only a few drops of rain fell. A shower in February isn’t so unusual but this looked more like typical April weather. It was mostly cloudy all the day but light conditions changed every minute, which made this day very interesting for every photographer.

FASCINATING PATTERNS ON ICE / STRUKTUREN IM EIS

A pattern on Ice on the frozen lake “Eibsee” near the famous Zugspitze in Germany.  Changing periods of freezing and melting created fascinating patterns on the frozen surface of the lake. In Winter 2012/2013 there were both warm and cold days. In some areas of the lake the ice looks very solid, but in some areas the ice is very thin.

The lake is nearly 1000 meters above sea level. Climate conditions are extreme. Certainly, the fact that the lake is very close to the giant rocks of the highest mountains in Germany does play a role. For some time in winter, some areas of the lake get only very little sunshine. There might be also undercurrents in the lake which play a role in the creation of the pattern on ice.

Image processing purposely altered the images, in this case, to make the patterns on the ice more significant:

Muster auf dem Eis des gefrorenen Eibsees nahe der Zugspitze in Deutschland. Wechselnde Perioden von kaltem und warmen Wetter schufen diese faszinierenden Muster auf der Eisoberfläche. Im Winter 2012/2013 gab es sowohl viele kalte wie warme Tage. In einigen Bereichen des Sees sieht das Eis sehr stabil aus, an anderen Stellen dagegen sehr dünn und fragil.

Der See befindet sich fast 1000 Meter über dem Meeresspiegel. Das Klima hier ist extrem. Sicherlich spielt auch die Situierung des Sees sehr nahe an den gigantischen Felsen von Deutschlands höchstem Gebirge eine Rolle. Für einige Zeit im Winter bekomen bestimmte Teile des Sees dadurch sehr wenig Sonnenlicht. Möglicherweise spielen aber auch Strömungen im Wasser eine Rolle bei der Entstehung dieser Muster im Eis.

Die Bilder wurden absichtlich bearbeitet, so dass die Strukturen betont sind.