Winter on the Chesapeake Bay

With winter plunging the U.S. east coast into one last cold spell, I thought I'd share some photos I collected from around the southern portion of the Chesapeake bay over the past few months. It typically only snows a few inches here per year and almost never gets cold enough for the bay to freeze. That's why this is so amazing -- that's not snow on the sand, it's frozen saltwater. You can see some interesting patterns formed where the over-wash of the waves froze, and the pools of slush a little further out were rhythmically swelling while I took the photo. The sound of the tiny ice crystals churning in those pools was actually quite soothing, almost like the fizz of freshly poured soda but deeper and slowly undulating.

And below are some bonus pics. These were from the swamps in a nearby state park. This water is brackish, but it wasn't completely frozen over.