Temperatures are falling, there's a nip in the air and that can make for some pretty striking weather phenomenon in Scotland.

In the last week or so we've already been treated to some beautiful Aurora displays and even a fogbow - a beautiful white rainbow formed out of water droplets at night.

The latest natural attraction to come our way comes from Dan Mclead, who shot these mysterious ice pancakes in Helmsdale in the Highlands.

"It was a hard frost so everything was white," says Dan. "I had to pull into a lay-by to let a car pass and looked into the river and saw them."

The strange-looking formations, often resembling frozen lily pads, are called ice pancakes or pancake ice and form when winter conditions are just right.

The last big occurrence of them hit the news in 2014 after National Geographic picked up the story of the little winter pancakes caught floating down the River Dee.

Jamie Urquhart, a biologist with the River Dee Trust, noticed them at Lummels Pool, a few miles downstream of the Queen's royal residence at Balmoral.

According to National Geographic, the ice discs form when waves jostle pieces of smooth ice against each other, rounding their edges.

As the resulting pancakes collide with the waves, they develop raised edges, making them look even more like the rounded treats.

Pancake ice is more commonly found in colder water, especially around Antarctica and in the Baltic Sea.

It can form anywhere when conditions are right, however, including on the Great Lakes of the United States and of course, Scotland.

Ice pancakes can also eventually meld together to form sheet ice which, if the ice gets thick enough and the water rough enough, can fracture and pile up on itself forming ice ridges like those spotted by Bruce Phillip on the River Ayr a few years ago.

"We were heading along the road and all the traffic was going slow," says Bruce. "We assumed either roadworks or an accident. We never would have guessed it would be something like this. So we stopped and joined all the other people taking photos."

There's still one rare weather phenomenon that we have yet to see captured this winter, as shared here by Nancy Sleeper who spotted snow rollers in Urbana, Ohio.

A snow roller is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which large snowballs are formed naturally as chunks of snow are blown along the ground by wind, picking up material along the way, in much the same way that the large snowballs used in snowmen are made.

Strong winds blow the snow and create nature's own snowballs.

The last time some were spotted was in Aboyne, Aberdeenshire, in early January, so keep us posted if you spot any.