Northwestern Oklahoma knows about ice – the kind that rolls in on a wave of freezing rain and sleet and immediately begins its dirty work of pulling down tree limbs and power lines and sliding motorists into ditches and guardrails.

Rarely do we get the kind that floated in Saturday morning when misty fog puffed against supercooled surfaces to add a silvery tinsel to fence rails, vegetation and trees and then melt away without a trace by day’s end.

The ethereal photo at right of a frost-framed county road, taken Saturday morning by Times and Free Press staffer Twila Adams proved the most popular picture to date on the newspaper’s Facebook page.

Conditions are rarely ripe in Oklahoma for this kind of feathery, winter wonderland display (see Adams’ close-up of a rural cemetery fence, below), which one online reader described as “hoar frost.”

The Times and Free Press had been referring to it online as freezing fog, which according to all the wisdom that Google could impart, is actually called “rime frost.”

Both occur in conditions of extreme cold, but hoar frost is said to occur on clear, calm nights when dew forms on supercooled surfaces and freezes instantly, while rime frost results when fog or mist meets those same supercooled surfaces and freezes.

However, photos of hoar frost we found online more closely resemble the spiky, feathery displays in and around our county Saturday, while rime frost tends to be more crystalline.

Any local weather nerds or former Northeasterners more familiar with these frost formations are encouraged to weigh in on our Facebook page.

Incidentally, the term “hoar frost” is from the Old English word “hoar,” which refers to old or aged, and is so called because the spiky crystals resemble an old man’s beard.

For more of Adams’ frosty photos, see the Times and Free Press Facebook page.