Wind, Sand and Water.

When I was an undergrad (back in 2008), I ventured down to the Wakulla County in the pan handle of Florida to help out a professor with some field work in coastal wetlands. I slugged around in knee to waist deep mud, laying sediment traps and using a hand-held strain gauge to measure the mud's cohesion. The wetlands are separated from the ocean by sandy banks, only connected by small coastal streams that flow in or out, depending on the tide. Though we were there for the mud, I was most intrigued by the patterns in the sand.

Above, a clump of grass at the mercy of changing winds traces out concentric circles. Below, soft arcs are swept on top of faint ripple-marks. 

Below, recent high-water marks are recorded by horizontal layering.

We were down in Florida several months after Katrina and the storm's impact was obvious. Below is a section of the road that was washed out during the storm, opening a new inlet to the wetlands. 

Hard rime high on Moosilauke

The cold winds are rising! Winter is coming! And with it comes alien landscapes.

Hard rime deposited on Mt. Moosilauke.

When conditions are right, ice can capture the wind in remarkable ways. Hard rime forms when a cold fog blows through and droplets freeze onto the cold surfaces. It's a bit counterintuitive, but the rime forms on the windward side of the obstruction - meaning the protruding ice points into the wind rather than being deposited in its wake.

Scale-like rime on the windward side of a rock

I took these photos on two separate trips to the summit of Mt. Moosilauke in New Hampshire in the dead of New England winter. On the first trip, conditions were cold but not too windy on the summit, making the wind-sculpted ice even more surreal. On the second trip, summit conditions were what you would expect looking at the photos - subzero (Fahrenheit) temperatures and blistering wind to freeze your eyeballs shut.

Cold vegetation?

The photo above captures the flow of the wind especially well. The rime is aligned in an almost radial pattern, implying that the dominant wind direction during rime formation was perpendicular to the sign. The wind hit the sign, then flowed out radially along the sign's surface so that the rime grew inward to the center of the sign. That's my interpretation at least :)