Black ice, sometimes called clear ice, refers to a thin coating of glazed ice on a surface.
While not truly black, it is virtually transparent, allowing black asphalt/macadam roadways to be seen through it, hence the term "black ice". The typically low levels of noticeable ice pellets, snow, or sleet surrounding black ice means that areas of the ice are often practically invisible to drivers and thereby do not serve as a good indicator that they should reduce their speeds.
Similar thin invisible layers of ice that form along ships can cause them to become unbalanced. In the mountains, black ice is referred to as verglas (glaze ice) and is a great hazard for climbers.
Read more about Black Ice: On Roads and Pavements, Bridges, Ice Formation On Seagoing Vessels, Mountains
Famous quotes containing the words black and/or ice:
“Some burn damp faggots, others may consume
The entire combustible world in one small room
As though dried straw, and if we turn about
The bare chimney is gone black out
Because the work had finished in that flare.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)