Glazed frost

When cold weather is coming, various misfortunes such as windfall, snow crush, and frost clefts afflict the plants. Trees also suffer from the ice layer which is formed on the branches and trunks of trees, when the air temperature in the crown area is between 0 - 3 degrees. The supercooled rain drops fall on the branches and eventually freeze on them turning into a bare ice. The glazed frost is formed.

In case of glazed frost the ice layer can reach 3 to 5 cm turning branches into the icicles. This phenomenon often happens in the woods when the growing mass of ice makes a tree to go down. Depending on the shape and sizes of crowns, thickness, trees respond to glazed frost differently. The crooked trunks may form. Willow trees usually have many trunks, their crowns are thick and wide, and glacier covering often leads to tree breakage. Pine, especially a young pine, often perishes from glazed frost. Spruce rarely inclines when snow and ice sticks, as the branches are usually directed downwards, and the water flows quickly without accumulating on the crown. Among hardwood the straight-stemmed aspen where snow and ice accumulates insufficiently is least damaged. The shrubs endure the glazed frost best of all.