Hot Springs can Get Frozen Over

[LittleDas75]

Yep you heard me right. A lot of people have been wondering how the hot springs in The Big Freeze could get frozen. Well I decided to look it up and as it turns out hot springs can become frozen if it's cold enough.

[Dr. Rex]

Cold enough to only freeze the surface of the water? As much as I liked LBT 8, I thought that didn't really make a lot of sense in hindsight.

[LittleDas75]

Maybe.

[Hammy]

Not sure about hot springs specifically, but I do know that any given body of water that's fairly deep will freeze from the top down, usually with only a relatively thin layer of ice on the surface. So I would think that if a hot spring was gonna freeze, it'd form that same kind of layer. I never really questioned this, even as a kid, because I saw that pattern of freezing on my local lake. Figured it was the same principle in LBT. The surface of the water was cold enough to freeze, but not cold enough to penetrate much further down, thus thin ice.

[Dr. Rex]

Not sure about hot springs specifically, but I do know that any given body of water that's fairly deep will freeze from the top down, usually with only a relatively thin layer of ice on the surface. So I would think that if a hot spring was gonna freeze, it'd form that same kind of layer. I never really questioned this, even as a kid, because I saw that pattern of freezing on my local lake. Figured it was the same principle in LBT. The surface of the water was cold enough to freeze, but not cold enough to penetrate much further down, thus thin ice.

Hm, that's true. Good insight.