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this is the most dramatic video of candle ice I've ever seen. if I didn't know it was candle ice I'd think it was cgi
here's a closeup video someone made of candled ice. it can happen to sheet ice when repeated cycles of thawing and refreezing (typically in spring) make it lose structural integrity. the ice is just as thick as ever, but it's super fragile and shatters into spines
maybe the earliest written reference to candle ice — from the notes of david thompson, a british-canadian cartographer/trader/surveyor from the 1790s
in other ice news...
for today's ice content, here's a video of ice balls rolling up from lake michigan. my understanding is that ice balls can form when pancake ice (one of the first stages of water freezing over; pancake-shaped patches of ice form on the surface) get rolled by waves into balls
here's a photo of pancake ice on lake michigan — you can totally imagine it being sculpted into balls if the water was wavy and cold enough. that's why ice balls are found close to shore, not the middle of the lake — the shore is where waves can really roll them into shape.
I used to regard ice as a simple, straightforward thing — if water gets cold, it becomes ice. but the more I learn about it, the more I feel it's a complex expression of irregular, invisible forces — water currents, weather patterns etc. it's like water's version of baking
like look at these ice discs, another rare ice phenomenon. huge ice discs in rivers, spinning slowly. what the fuck? scientists still aren't sure how they work. does the force of a current against a riverbank shear the ice into a circle? does its own meltwater make it spin?
here's another dramatic candle ice video. on youtube it's described as an 'ice wave', as though the wave is spontaneously freezing. I think it's actually an ice shove. ice shoves are the frozen version of floods — wind or weather patterns cause floating ice to overflow onto land
when an ice shove is big, it's scary — like an avalanche. here's a video of one from lake erie (captured by george kaurounis in 2019)
here's an interesting 19th century anecdote about a sergeant saving a child from one of montreal's infamous ice shoves (once common, since prevented via engineering) https://montrealgazette.com/sponsored/mtl-375th/from-the-archives-an-extraordinary-act-of-heroism-on-the-st-lawrence/
I love how ice has a seasonal life cycle. people who live intimately with waterways that freeze over, or who study river and lake ice, will talk about "the spring breakup of '13" (breakup = when thawing ice breaks into slabs) or "rotten ice" (melting, mushy ice) like it's a crop
I'm sad that my way of living isn't intertwined with lakes or rivers such that my seasonal cycle is fitted to theirs
there's something unsettling to me about being so untethered from seasons — being able to eat things that aren't in season, or shoot off in a plane and step out into a totally different season, and not wait for a season to change. I feel like I should be living on a shorter leash
another excellent candle ice video
a beautiful video of an ice shove, apparently from the yenisey river in siberia. you can see how the huge sheet of ice collides with the shore, sending the ice overflowing onto the sand
