Not sure what the question is. The picture seems to me to show riffled glass outside a partly open normal window. What am I missing? Fog? lots of wet?

If I cede 50$ of the score, can I ask what you thought I should notice immediately?

Good, now at least I can use up this $%%^&* duplicate post...

Well, I still don't see anything special in the  picture; is there some frost that formed in the car when you did the warming up? The furry appearance on some of the fittings?

If so, I have no better suggestion than that the warming up evaporated moisture and possibly frost as well, raising the ambient humidity to well above the dewpoint, while the air and fittings' temperature was well below freezing.

Then, if it only happened when you opened the window, it might have been the influx of colder air than what had been in the car overnight, conceivably rich in nucleating dust particles, that set the process off... Symmetry breaking and all that!

Am I still missing the point? I often do, you know!

What I'm seeing is a sheet of ice. The interesting bit is that the ice has stayed in a sheet even when the window was rolled down. I assume the heat inside the car melted the ice where it touched the window, allowing the window to move and the ice to stay intact.

?

Is that it?

Sometimes, when ice climbing, I would realise that the "solid" material supporting me was merely a layer of ice with a waterfall behind it. The disturbing feeling of climbing on not-very-much-at-all usually gets worse as you ascend because the ice tends to thin towards the top. I think this sheet of ice is similarly constructed.

Good grief Pete!!!

Hitherto I would have given odds of 7 to 6 that you were at least marginally sane!

Do you have any phobias concerning men with butterfly nets? I am not nervous of heights as such, but being unable to control my falling or not falling gives me the heebies. Getting me to climb an unsupported wall of ice of undetermined fragility would be harder than getting me to skate over a thin sheet of the stuff over deep water, which in turn would be of the same order as getting me to fly by fluttering my hands.

So, Bruce, is Pete right? Is that bathroom window effect a sheet of ice in contact with your car window, and not an outside window? I notice it is wet. If that really is right, then I can only assume that the ice formed on the car from an outside source of spray or concentrated freezing fog, the large scale of the ripples being the effect of positive feedback and surface tension.

If that is so, I suppose that the sheet was not far from melting point and when you  warmed the interior of the car the heat melted the ice in contact with the glass, thereby enabling you to open the window.

Am I getting (you should excuse the expression) warm?

Given our weather outside at the moment, it would be nice if you could exchange half of your weather for half of ours!