The video shows the moment a social media user discovers delicate frost flowers spread on the surface of a frozen lake.

The footage shows thousands of frost flowers, an odd phenomenon where frost grows from imperfections in the surface ice amid extreme sub-zero temperatures, that were captured on Thursday, 7th December.

It was reportedly recorded in the city of Shouzhou, in China’s northern Shanxi Province, by a netizen identified only as Mr An.

Mr An told local media: “I don’t know what happened. This is my first time seeing it. This kind of scene is not common.”

Frost flowers are ice crystals most commonly found growing on young sea ice and thin lake ice in cold and calm conditions.

They are similar to hoar frost and usually grow in patches between three and four centimetres (1.1 and 1.5 inches) in diameter.

These mesmerising formations, according to reports, appear when the atmosphere is much colder than the underlying ice.

Amazed social media users shared the video more than 16,000 times after it was posted on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.

Douyin user ‘Sister Lin’ said: “If I hadn’t looked carefully and said they were ice flowers, I would have thought that someone could be so romantic, folding paper cranes all over the ground.”

User ‘Jiajia is very reliable’ commented: “Nature is really amazing.”

And ‘Little fairy Daji loves to dance’ added: “If not for Douyin, you may never see so many things in your life.”