This is not a photomontage but a real phenomenon: harsh climatic conditions have given birth to these ice apples
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himAn apple that seems to come from a single block of crystal, perfect in every detail and even still attached to the tree. No, we are not talking about a magical object or a fairy forest, but about a real and - although rare - perfectly natural phenomenon: the ghost mele.
“Ghost” because, on closer inspection, the apple that was attached to the tree no longer exists. What remains is only a thin layer of ice that represents an empty shell: only the shape of the apple remains in an evocative play of transparencies.
The ghost apple images (like the one on the cover) date back to 2019, but have returned viral on the web in recent days. at the time, they were shared on Facebook by a Michigan farmer, Andrew Sietsema, who had immortalized the bizarre natural phenomenon in her orchard. The ice apples appeared after an unprecedented freezing rain storm, accompanied by extremely cold temperatures across the region.
Posted by Andrew Sietsema on Wednesday, February 6, 2019
But how are these ghost apples formed? There is a need for conditions particularly severe climatic conditions, which allow the rain falling on the fruit to freeze in a very short time, creating a thin layer of ice that covers the whole apple - just like it happened in Mr. Sietsema's orchard.
Posted by Andrew Sietsema on Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Fruits, due to the presence of fibers and acid substances, have a lower freezing point than water - therefore they thaw at a lower temperature than the melting point of ice. This causes the fruit to decompose inside its ice "wrapper" which remains intact, as the flesh and skin of the apple slide down to the ground.
Posted by Andrew Sietsema on Wednesday, February 6, 2019
This explains why only its ice "ghost" remains of the apple, attached to the branch of the tree. Recreating the very special conditions that gave life to this phenomenon (the temperature, the freezing rain, the type of fruit ...) is practically impossible: ghost apples have therefore remained unique in recent history, but it is not certain that they cannot appear again. .
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