Tag: Ice

Picture of the Day for March 10, 2014

Besides the ice caves on the shore of Lake Superior, there were frozen water falls to view which might just be a little a wet trickle in the summer but it creates a large frozen falls in the winter.

The ice also appears different colors, like the yellow or pink, which picks up sand grains from the sandstone. And then in certain spots you can find blue ice, which is caused by how light is absorbed in the snow and ice and the difference in wavelength from the red spectrum to the blue. Water and ice behaves like a blue filter, which absorbs the reds and orange, and why deeper water appears blue.

Snow is composed of a bunch of ice grains with air in between them and almost all of the visible light striking the snow is reflected back and appears white. But in ice, there is less air and so fewer opportunities for light to scatter back out and light travels farther into the ice and gives the ice more time to absorb the red light so when the light returns to the surface, it is lacking red light, making it appear blue.

Colorful Ice

Colorful Ice

Picture of the Day for April 24, 2013

On April 24, 1916, Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organize a rescue for the ice-trapped ship Endurance. After four rescue attempts, Shackleton made it back to Elephant Island on August 30.

The Endurance became trapped in the Weddell Sea in February 1915 and the expedition had to abandon ship at the end of October. The ice condition made it difficult to travelthan a mile a day so the party camped on the ice waiting for the ice to breakup. Finally in April 1916 the crew made it to Elephant Island and remained there until their rescue in August. It would be more than 40 years before the first crossing of Antarctica was achieved, by the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1955–58.

After some icy winter days here, there is no way I want to endure the Antarctic ice!

Icy Tree

Icy Tree

Picture of the Day for April 15, 2013

The RMS Titanic, a British passenger liner, sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning on April 15, 1912 after colliding with an iceberg the previous evening just before midnight during her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New York City.

Yesterday it wasn’t an ice berg, but ice did cause a ‘sinking’ when the power lines and trees became encased in ice. When the heavy limbs broke from the freezing rain, it took power lines down causing a power outage.

The remaining passengers and crew aboard the Titanic when she sank were plunged into lethally cold water with a temperature of only 28°F. Almost all of those in the water died of hypothermia, cardiac arrest, or drowning within minutes. Even though the temperature was below freezing yesterday, at least my house didn’t get that cold before the power was restored.

Icy Day

DSC06306msw

Picture of the Day for January 30, 2013

What is an eerie noise that sounds like rain is actually the icy limbs rattling in the wind and it makes you wonder how many limbs are going to break under the weight of the ice. And can be sort of pretty to look at and it seems like snowflakes, the ice creates a unique form on every needle, branch and limb. It appears every needle on the pine tree was encased by the ‘pretty ice’.

Unique Ice

Unique Ice