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Disappearance of puddle water during the night with growth of ice needles and its reappearance during the day

Nature volume 265, pages 519–520 (1977)Cite this article

Abstract

A PUDDLE appears in a dip in the ground after a fall of rain or snow. It becomes covered with an ice sheet during cold nights in the winter in the rural area of the northern part of the Kanto district in Japan. The ice sheet has a characteristic shape. It is not flat hut dished and usually an air space is found under thin ice sheets without puddle water. Furthermore, an abundance of ice needles grow on the soil surrounding the puddle. These phenomena in puddles in winter seem to be general in the Kanto district. This report describes observations made on some puddles located at the side of the road in the Kanto district during February 1976 to clarify the process of formation of the dished-out ice sheet, the air space under the ice sheet, and the disappearance and appearance of puddle water.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute for Environmental Studies, P. O. Yatabe, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 300-2l, Japan

    K. SATAKE

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  1. K. SATAKE
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SATAKE, K. Disappearance of puddle water during the night with growth of ice needles and its reappearance during the day. Nature 265, 519–520 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1038/265519a0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/265519a0

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