With the wind chills below zero again, winter isn’t releasing its grip today but maybe next week will bring warmer conditions.
Winter’s Grip
Although the temperature stayed below freezing, the sun was strong enough to cause some melting and some of the icicles grew in length before breaking off. The two foot icicles I saw today are tiny compared to the huge icicles by the ice caves on Lake Superior. If you look closely, you can spot a person dressed in black under the ice formations near the center of the photo so the icicles are a tad longer than two feet.
Large Icicles
There are a variety of caves, tunnels, frozen waterfalls and other ice formations along the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. This large cave is called the Garage and it would easily accommodate a huge dump truck although I’m not sure the ice under would hold up to the truck’s weight. But it was fun exploring the large cave with its ice coated walls.
The Garage
The recent winter storm dropped 20 to 30 inches of snow along Wisconsin’s south shore of Lake Superior, but it also blew the ice around which created large cracks where the ice was forming. And with the poor ice conditions, it looks like there will be another year where visitors will not be able walk on the lake ice to visit the various ice formations and caves.
No Ice Cave Walk
Today I saw white rolling across the landscape although it wasn’t white caps from waves but snow blowing across the road from the strong winds and a new coating of snow. The birds lined up at my bird feeders today were mostly purple finch and not any sea gulls from this beach scene.
Gulls at the Beach
On Saturday, 34 fisherman were stranded on a piece of ice that cracked and separated away from the rest ice near shore. They had to be rescued from the floating ice as it floating farther out into Lake Michigan. I wouldn’t be fishing on the ice since the ice changes frequently on big bodies of water as this image from Lake Superior was a solid sheet one minute, fractured a while later and after a few more hours, the ice floated out of view.
Lake Superior Floating Ice