[gspencley]

I think that there are two assumptions that we tend to make that causes the idea of air drying frozen clothes to be unintuitive:

1. We don't expect solids to evaporate, because it's not something we notice often (though if you think about the fact that a few inches of snow can disappear in a couple of days while the temperature remains below zero Celsius, you suddenly realize that you do observe it if you live in a cold climate)

2. We're so accustomed to using heat to speed the evaporation of water. So we might assume that removing large amounts of heat energy will "stop" evaporation. Or at least cause it to slow so much that air drying becomes impractical.

But ice does, indeed evaporate (to be accurate, it sublimates). My question is how temperature affects the speed of evaporation at low temperatures. How long do you need to leave your wet clothes hanging below freezing before they are dry?

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-sublimation-solid-ice-quickly-...

[LegitShady]

I live in a place where there is ice outside all winter. During winter the cold air can't hold moisture as much as hot air and most of the days are at 100% humidity even at -20 because the air simply can't hold more.

I might try this out on the deck next season but I don't assume ice is just going to sublimate away because it's literally outside all winter and doesn't go anywhere.

[peterfirefly]

> We don't expect solids to evaporate, because it's not something we notice often

Although most people have a freezer that needs to be deiced occasionally.

Particularly, if they have an ice cube tray in their freezer... and, somehow, the ice cubes in the tray slowly shrink.