Gallery: When The Ocean Freezes Over

By now you’ve probably read headlines about a “bomb cyclone” in the Northeast pocket of the US killing six.

You’ve read or heard or watched the media mayhem, words like chaos, dumping snow, headlines like “Colder Than Mars” drifting down newsfeeds.

Right now, on the US’s east coast, it’s really fucking cold. Air temps well-below freezing, so cold that the ocean, in Nantucket, froze over. The result: not-your-average ocean imagery. 

“With a floundering temperature in the low, single digits this past week, I knew there was a good chance the Slurpee Waves would find their way back to Nantucket,” photog Jonathan Nimerfroh tells Stab. “Sure enough, on the morning of January 2nd I pulled my car up to Nobadeer beach and there they were. This time, two friends surfed just beyond the icy eddie, hooting and hollering and holding up giant icebergs above their heads in neoprene gloved hands. I ran up and down the beach, taking as many shots as I could of this freezing, fleeting show of nature. Slurpee waves are the kind of thing you might only be lucky enough to see once, so I count myself as very lucky to have seen them twice. Normally, water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But salt in the ocean lowers the freezing temperature — basically by getting in the way of the water molecules — to about 28.4 degrees.”