The record-setting winter of 2015 has left us with all kinds of remarkable images, most of them of snow and ice but a photographer on Nantucket found something most of us have never seen – nearly frozen waves.

Photographer Jonathan Nimerfroh found himself staring at an ocean full of Slurpee. The waters of the Atlantic Ocean looked like it due to the unusually cold temperatures that were making it freeze. Lakes freeze every year, but oceans freezing is a rare sight.

The photographer/surfer/ocean enthusiast set out to capture the beauty of this rare event. While the partially-frozen waves churned and hit the shore, they appeared to be made out of something thicker than water. Jonathan describes the sight as follows, “The wind was howling from the southwest which would typically make rough or choppy conditions, not so good for surfing. But since the surface of the sea was frozen slush, the wind did not change the shape. They were perfect dreamy slush waves.” The pictures below show this bizarre phenomenon.

They were a strange, thick consistency.