Funny. I have a similar ODD water freezing situation. We moved to a house on an island (take a ferry home every night) here in MI. The island is on the river between Lake Huron and Lake St Clair. It's been COLD here. The river froze which is great because the ferry can't run consistantly unless they can break a path in the ice that remains open. Ferry will stop running and people cant get on or off the island if chunks of ice are flowing. Had to stay at a motel a couple days. Old timers said its been down 5 days at a time in the 90's. So the river had frozen solid (ice fishers everywhere) but even though its been COLD it thawed a little 2 days ago and yesterday and overnight THERES NO ICE!? It's in the 20's!!!! Wierd. I can't explain other than all the septics on the island are flowing into the river and melting the ice

Think about the volume of water flowing through that river from THREE Great Lakes. Even though the surface is frozen, there's still a lot of water flowing down deep. It doesn't take much of a thaw, combined with the force moving that water to break up the ice.

My question, did the crack make it freeze or did freezing make it crack? Remember the other two didn’t freeze and were in the same place on ground. Did the pressure release from crack enable the freezing process? All three still had their sealing caps still on. Bear with me since I do a lot of ‘contemplating’ nowadays since retiring.

We also have bottled water, in addition to our great quality well water. We keep the 5-gallon jugs in our insulated garage, but there have been numerous times over the years where our garage got a little below freezing inside. The water in the jugs have never froze though - they sit on insulated "pads" of dense foam I cut for them. Anyway, several times I've brought them in, cleaned them (like I always do), & then placed them upside-down on the water dispenser, & THEN they start to freeze (crystallize) right before your eyes. They don't freeze solid to where they split the jug however. Somehow agitating the water causes a reaction. It's bizarre.

You hit something there, a cold sealed bottle of water is liquid UNTILL you break that seal, then like you said, it freezes immediately. The partially frozen jug had less water in it before I put in truck.

I have a little experience with 5-gallon spring drinking water as we have been getting 3-4 5 gallon bottles delivered every two weeks to our 163-year-old farmhouse since December 1989. Most times it sits on the porch for several hours or even overnight. We've only experienced a few partially frozen bottles during those 35 years and never one completely frozen (solid) but my wife always worried that it would happen but never did?? Worst thing that happened was the delivery person put the bottle down on the porch a little hard and put a small crack in the bottom and we didn't notice the leaking water on the bottom of one or two When I put them into the water cooler the leak or crack "vented" the bottles and with no vacuum the now upside-down bottle started to empty themselves all over the floor . Emptied the remaining contents into a good just used bottle and marked it for the delivery person. Always given a new bottle free replacement. So in 35-years how many 5-gallon spring water bottles do you think we have had delivered to us? And there is a reason why I know just how many that have been delivered and how many I have carried in and how many I have put in or onto the water cooler. Anal yes but it was always a fresh bottle.

Water can be super cooled (temp well below freezing) if it is pure enough.

If it is super cooled, once you introduce anything that will start a formation of ice crystals then it will start to solidify immediately.

Since you mentioned they were still sealed. It could be the water was purified enough not to freeze but the crack allowed an impurity to get in and cause solidification.


The impurity could just be a piece of plastic shard from the crack.