Frozen H2O

The other day a friend and I had a disagreement about whether water expands or shrinks when it freezes. I said "expands" as per the how pop cans I left outside exploded. He said "shrinks" as per how the water he puts in the ice cube tray is more than the ice he gets out. We turned to the infamous Ask Me Now. And the first answer came back as follows:

"According to our reference site, Generally, water expands when it freezes because of its molecular structure, in tandem with the unusual elasticity of the hydrogen bond and the particular lowest energy hexagonal crystal conformation that it adopts under standard conditions."

Feeling this to be inadequate to finish the conversation I asked a more specific question and came up with this:

"According to our reference site: Water starts out behaving normally. As its temperature drops, water obediently shrinks together--until it reaches 4 degrees Celsius (39 degrees F.). Then, amazingly, water reverses course, its volume slowly increasing as it chills. When water finally freezes, at 0 C (32 F.), it expands dramatically. Scientists say water's quirky behavior is caused by the shape of its molecule and by how its molecules bond to one another."

Now with a satisfying answer, I then turned to the issue of the shrinking water in the ice cube tray. Here Ask Me Now failed to understand my question and spat out this answer:

"Liquid water is most dense, essentially 1.00 g/cm³, at 4 °C and becomes less dense as the water molecules begin to form the hexagonal crystals of ice as the temperature drops to 0 °C. This is due to hydrogen bonds forming between the water molecules, which line up molecules less efficiently (in terms of volume) when water is frozen. The result of this is that ice floats on liquid water."

So as I thought about the mystery of the missing water I began to develop my own hypothesis. Maybe the water in the ice cube tray isn't shrinking at all? Maybe it's evaporating into the air in the freezer? Think about it; when is the air driest during the year? In the winter when it's the coldest, like in a freezer. Maybe the cold dry environment of the freezer caused the water in the ice cube tray to evaporate. This is my hypothesis. I'll leave you with that.