Frost damage often occurs in early spring night, causing huge economic losses to the famous tea industry. Sprinkler irrigation is an effective method of frost protection, which works by maintaining leaf and bud temperatures above the critical temperature through spraying water onto the tea plant and releasing latent heat as it freezes. This method has lower economic input and labor intensity compared with other methods, and sprinkler systems can also be used for irrigation, and fertilization. However, research is still lacking on the storage of water and ice on the surface of tea trees during irrigation to prevent freezing. A tea tree was planted in pot and placed on a high-precision electronic scale to enable weighing of water mass on tea plant surface during sprinkler irrigation. An umbrella cloth was used to keep out sprinkler water from falling into the pot or onto the electronic scale. The patterns of water and ice storage on the tea tree surface under non-freezing (4.0~8.0℃) and freezing conditions (-5.0~0℃) were explored and the effects of sprinkler irrigation duration and nozzle type were analyzed. The results showed that the water storage in tea plants under non-freezing conditions went through three stages of accumulation, dynamic equilibrium and drying respectively;while ice storage under freezing conditions went through four stages of accumulation, retention, melting loss and drying. The tea tree surface was constantly renewed through icing, allowing the sprinkler water to be retained. Under the same irrigation pressure and duration, the water storage and ice storage capacity of micro-sprinkler were 1.2 times and 2.0 times of that of impact sprinkler, respectively. The maximum water storage capacity was about 0.22kg, but the maximum ice storage was increased significantly with the increase of irrigation duration. The ice storage of sprinkling 1.5h was 2.9 times of that of 0.5h. The stem water volume of the micro-sprinkler was higher under non-freezing and freezing conditions, which was 3.0 times and 2.7 times that of the impact sprinkler, respectively. The water and ice storage on the tea tree surface under different conditions was investigated, a method for measurement of shrub canopy interception was proposed, which laid the foundation for further determining the water required for sprinkler irrigation to prevent frost and optimizing the sprinkler irrigation method.