Neat Lake Champlain Ice Pictures

With Vermont experiencing 'wintry mix' again, and the sidewalks covered in ice and ball-bearing shaped sleet, it is necessary to think about ice a lot when navigating around.  It's not all bad, though.  The cycles of freeze and thaw have brought some amazing ice formations to Lake Champlain.

About a week ago, during a thaw and before the lake froze most of the way across, my friend Neahga was down by the lake and captured some amazing scenes of ice and water.  Some of it looked a bit like frazil ice, and it seems to have formed when a thin layer of ice offshore fractured during a thaw.



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Neahga tells me the ice was making a sound like "grinding and gnashing of teeth" or :"a stadium of people all smashing ice with their mouths open".  Meanwhile, in a sheltered bay, pancake ice was forming.



The Flickr set is here, with more to be uploaded soon.

Later, after the latest cold snap, I was down by the lake and found large ice blocks that had thawed, broken apart, and frozen back together.





Apparently the mostly-frozen lake is now covered in snow, but I can't see it from here due to all the wintry mix.

Speaking of which, here's another photo - of UVM during the sloppy wet blizzard we had last Friday.



More to follow...