Blog Post 1 of 3:
Ice, Sleet, Snow, Freezing Rain… Oh My!
An Exploration of Snow and Ice in My Family’s Life and the Basics of Precipitation Formation
As a kid, I could barely sit still during a snowstorm. I would peer out the window to see the fat flakes falling and yip in excitement. Most people prayed for safe roads and clear skies leading up to Christmas, but I asked Santa every year for the blizzard of a century. My mom would bundle me up in my snowsuit, and I would set out into my backyard to explore a winter wonderland.
Like any Ohio girl worth her salt, I enjoyed a variety of winter hobbies throughout my youth including skating, sledding, and skiing. A perfect day in the snow was sledding in the morning with Dad, cross-country skiing in the afternoon with Mom, and curling up by a fire with hot chocolate in the evening. Figure skating was also a hobby I was extremely passionate for as a young girl. Beyond having fun in the snow, I was always awe-struck by how silent a snowstorm was and how otherworldly the trees looked glittering with ice and snow.
The magnificent thing about being in college and having my own car is that I can revisit many of my childhood wonders. In the last year, I have had the chance to rediscover my love for the ice! I have had the chance to get back into cross-country skiing (I’m even hoping to try downhill again… oh and I would love to try ice fishing someday!) and figure skating. In this blog, I will be exploring not only my love for the winter season, but taking a deeper look at how ice has affected my family, Midwestern culture, Ohio geology, and the Great Lakes ecosystem community throughout history.
Not everyone in my family loved the snow… the local fowl in our backyard were always less than thrilled when the temperatures dropped below freezing. The family chickens have always been quite tentative at best when it comes to the snow. Despite being dressed in fluffy layers and feather boots, they give disgruntled squawks as they crunch through layers of snow and peck at their frozen water bowls in confusion. One of my tasks as a kid was to always go out and check on the hens. Each one of the girls would get a warm hug from me and some Vaseline spread on their combs and wattles to help protect their faces from the cold. Take a look at the full menagerie in the photos below!
The domestication of poultry for both meat and eggs has been a major milestone in the development of human civilizations. Most of our modern poultry originated from the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) that was native to several regions in Southeast Asia, China, and Eastern Europe. All of these regions had much higher average temperatures and were typically more moist environments as well. It was originally predicted that poultry were first domesticated for use in various traditional rituals in 2000 B.C., but there has been evidence found in the form of fossils that suggest that the domestic chicken has been around since before 6000 B.C. (Nature). This wild, skittish, poor-flying bird managed to migrate all around the globe once humans discovered what a wonderful source of food the birds are. Since the original chicken, the modern day chicken has been spit into hundreds of poultry breeds. Some of these breeds are specifically for meat or eggs, some dual purpose, some fancy, and some for their feathers to use as lures or decoration. Interestingly enough, despite the majority of poultry breeds disliking cold temperatures, there are several breeds that were developed in northern latitudes that are significantly more hardy. Since they are so social, most poultry breeds of a decent size (more than a few pounds) can huddle together in their coop and survive even below average Ohio temperatures although some breeds are quite susceptible to frostbite. Personally, my girls get the royal treatment when its below 10 degrees F and get to stay in a bathtub in our basement (yes they are babied).
The Christmas Ice Storm of 2014: An Account by Mark Rose
A few days before Christmas, my dad got a phone call that he was desperately needed at work because of a catastrophic ice storm that had left the city without electrical power. My dad, the well-organized weatherbug he was and still is, was expecting this call as the storm battered the city. He wished his family goodbye before leaving for several days. As a young girl back then, all I really remember was how Dad wasn’t home for Christmas Eve… but after recently hearing his stories of what happened during that storm I realized just how dangerous ice can be and how proud of my father I am.
For much of my childhood, my dad worked for AEP (American Electric Power Company) and Asplundh, a power line clearance company. His job covered a diverse number of tasks including marking trees that needed cutting away from the power lines, planning where to send tree crews, creating maps of the city where tree work was being done, being a liaison between the company and homeowners, managing conflict between parties, and finally, an organizer in times of emergency.
When Dad was called in to work in order to help manage the efforts to regain power back to the city he knew he was about to experience an event he would remember for the rest of his life. And memorable it was. During the storm, an incredible amount of 1-1.5 inches of ice covered everything in sight which caused wires to sag, structures to buckle, and trees to snap under the weight of the ice. To make matters worse, the temperatures stayed for several days below freezing meaning the ice did not melt. Powers transformers (responsible for modulating voltage) at the top of electrical poles were shorting out and wires were being snapped or shorting due to trees falling on them. A short occurs on electrical wires when an external object (like ice on a transformer or branches on two wires) create a shorter path for the current to move through. When a short occurs on a transformer (usually the electrodes are just over an inch away) the resistance goes to zero and the amperage goes towards infinity which causes the transformer to blow up in a fantastic burst of purple fizz. He recounts standing on a hill overlooking Gahanna watching as transformers blew up in brilliant blue-purple fireworks across the city every few seconds sounding as loud as artillery fire. My dad said this was exceptionally sobering because he knew that each explosion “was going to be a job of multiple hours onsite by a 3-5 person electrical crew to replace and fix” the equipment.
Dad, amongst the chaos of the storm, was responsible for checking line safety, alerting homeowners of the dangers, directing the hundreds of tree crews that had come from other states to assist with the disaster, and finding hotels and grocery stores in order to feed and house the masses of working people. Dad told me how a local grocery store had even opened their doors to the crews to come get basic foods free of charge. I was impressed at the ability of both the company and local citizens to rally together in times of emergency. For days, there was barely any time for Dad and the tree and wire crews to sleep or even eat as hundreds of thousands of people were without power or in other hazardous situations. The days blurred together and usually a soft spot on the rug was what he had to sleep on. The work seemed endless.
With the hard work of Dad and crew, power was restored to the city one power line at a time. Much damage had been done and even lives were lost in the storm. Dad had not only dealt with the challenges of restoring power, but being on the front lines of helping citizens who had significant property damage or had even lost their homes to falling trees. Ice, a small and lowly crystal, had caused significant destruction in our city. I have so much respect for the people who respond to natural disasters such as this one. My dad, a man with prowess in level-headedness and organization, looks back on his work in emergency icy and power management to be one of the most fulfilling and important times of his life.
The Physics Behind Ice Storms
Think of a hot and balmy 90 degree F day. As the outside temperatures reach sweltering levels, a thunderstorm bubbles up towering 10s of thousand of feet high in the sky. The storm angrily pours heavy rain onto the landscape. What if I told you, that where that precipitation forms in the cloud, it actually begins as snow?! Even on the hottest days of the summer, many thunderstorms have precipitation that begins as snow that eventually melts into rain as it comes closer to the earth’s surface. The reasoning behind this phenomena that melts snow into rain is called adiabatic cooling. Adiabatic cooling is defined as a reduction in temperature due to a proportional change in density (inversely proportional volume increase). As a warm air mass rises in elevation (higher into the atmosphere) it cools because of the decreasing pressure or thinner air of the atmosphere as you move away from the earth. As the air becomes less dense, the air molecules are not as close together which means they are less likely to interact with one another in the creation of kinetic energy. The less kinetic energy the lower the temperature.
In our atmosphere, every 1,000 feet of altitude increase on average results in the drop of 3.5 degrees F (2 degrees C) (SHSU). After doing a little bit of math… *runs numbers* … on a 90 degree F day any storm over ~16,500 feet has precipitation that begins as snow. This is calculated by taking 90 degrees – 32 degrees (freezing point) and dividing it by 3.5 degrees per one thousand feet. A typical thunderstorm can be 30-40,000 feet meaning that it is very common to have storm cells that begin as snow!
We receive our ground precipitation as rain when the snow reaches the 16,500 feet mark and it melts as it falls because the atmosphere is now dense enough to be over the freezing point. So how do other precipitation types besides rain and snow form? There can be warm and colder air masses intermixed in the path of a water droplet or snow crystal as it falls through the atmosphere. Depending on whether it freezes, melts, or refreezes again affect what type of precipitation will arrive at the ground level. See the precipitation types below to see how they are formed!
A few types of precipitation involving ice:
Snow: form in clouds with temperatures under the freezing point. No one of these ice crystals is ever alike and they typically form intricate 6-pointed stars.
Rain: either forms as droplets of rain in the cold or forms as snow first and then melts whenever the temperature is above the freezing point in which a phase change to a liquid occurs.
Sleet: The precipitation begins as snow and as it falls it hits a warm air mass thousands of feet above the ground. Before it reaches the ground though, it hits another cold air mass and recrystallizes to become round grains of ice pellets.
Freezing Rain and Fog: This type can be especially dangerous to humans and is what causes the destructive ice storms. Freezing rain occurs when snow melts right before it reaches the ground where it touches an object and immediately freezes as ice. This often occurs when the ground is cold and the warm layer of air is closest to the ground (NWS, link to a helpful figure!). The ground is then the perfect temperature for there to be a phase change from liquid to solid. In this case, the freezing rain solidifies on every object it touches and weighs them down (including trees and power lines).
In the case of freezing fog, supercooled water droplets remain in the air as liquid until a light breeze blows them onto various objects where needle-like ice crystals form. This can make ordinary woods turn into gorgeous ice sculptures in the form of rime ice (see the photo above). Rime ice forms on nights that are both foggy and extremely cold.
Ice Crystals: one extra category for your enjoyment! We don’t really get this one in Ohio, but it can occur in more northerly latitudes in the Great Lakes Region. These falling ice crystals typically fall slower and form crystals in the shape of plates or needles (NOAA). I’ve seen this type once in my life while on a trip to Minnesota in the middle of January. I did my best to get photos, but they did not turn out since the pieces are so small and intricate. This precipitation is called ‘diamond dust’ because the ice shimmers as it lazily falls to ground.
Blog Post 2 of 3:
The Great Lakes: “A Future Less Frozen”
How Snow and Ice Have Supported the Great Lakes Ecosystem and Culture for Centuries and How Climate Change is Changing this Dynamic
For this post’s field trip, I went to Sheldon Marsh State Nature Preserve just a 10-minute drive from downtown Sandusky, Ohio with a few friends of mine. The preserve is over 400 acres and is one of the last areas with intact lake-marsh-forest habitat (ODNR). In the spring and fall months, the swamp provides stopover habitat for 100s of species of birds. The temperatures were in the lower 30s with a sharp wind off of Lake Erie. It occasionally precipitated a mix of snow and rain. Much of the swamp was covered by a thin layer of ice and there was about an inch of snow on the ground from snow showers the night before.
Despite the plentiful amount of snow and mixed precipitation there was not much to be found in terms of ice formations. It is still fairly early in the season for any ice to build up along the coast of Lake Erie which explains why the waters are still open and choppy. While on the pebbled shores of the Lake, I could see large flocks of overwintering Double-crested Cormorants and Red-breasted Mergansers moving. They typically forage in large numbers in the lower Great Lakes moving away from the ice encrusted waters as the winter season progresses.
There was also a number of wildlife in the area of Sheldon Marsh. Though supplemental feeding is not allowed in state nature preserves, it still occurs fairly often. You can see that this Eastern Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger) was taking full advantage of the fact that someone dropped seed along the trail for the local songbirds. In particular, mammals have adaptations to deal with the icy temperatures. According to National Geographic, small mammals do not process feeling cool neurologically in the same way that humans do. The part of our central nervous system that usually perceives cold and stimulates a shivering response is reduced in winter in mammals like squirrels which makes them more cold tolerate (National Geographic). Squirrels and mice are considered extremophiles, which means they can tolerate hazardous environments that are normally harmful to most organisms. In this case, it is tolerance of extremely low temperatures. Fox squirrels can build sheltered nests on tree branches or within tree hollows, they have thick, insulated fur, and they pack on fat reserves to help them maintain their internal body temperature.
“A Future Less Frozen” An Analysis of a National Geographic Article
In continuing with my interests in the ice of the Great Lakes, I read a great article called “A Future Less Frozen” in the September 2020 issue of the National Geographic magazine. The Great Lakes truly have a history that is dominated by the condition of the climate. All water on our planet, whether it is a liquid, solid, or gaseous state, is literally shaped by the natural changes of our climate throughout time. Except, in the last 140 years since the Industrial Revolution the warming of 1 degree C o is caused by humans which has resulted in unprecedented changes to lakes. The steady warming of the climate has led to the decrease and sometimes complete disappearance of ice from the lakes which has led to changes in the ecosystem structure, animal communities, and even in human culture.
In particular, Lake Erie is undergoing many drastic changes due to climate change. For the last few decades, the average number of freezing days was 58 and recently, in the 2019-2020 winter season there were only 18 days with the daily temperatures below 32 degrees F. This is 40 days less than an average year. It could be seen as an anomaly in all honesty, but the magazine article goes on to express how the average has been trending down. The amount of precipitation falling in the watershed of the lakes is also increasing and water levels hit new record highs every few years. In February of 2020, only 19.5% of the lakes were covered in ice which is nearly a record low. It is clear that the amount of yearly ice coverage on the lakes is decline which will cause devastating effects to both the human and wildlife communities.
First, decreasing ice coverage on the Great Lakes is extremely detrimental to the ecosystem. In particular, there is much interest on studying Lake Erie because it is the shallowest of the five Great Lakes. Since it is the shallowest it is the most responsive to temperature changes meaning it is the first to develop ice (NWF). Consequences of the lack of ice include increases in harmful algal blooms because with less ice there is more open water exposed to sunlight that the algae can use to grow. With the increased amount of sediment pollution from the watershed and lack of ice, both of these are expected to make algal blooms worse resulting in larger and larger areas designated as “dead zones” due to the algae consuming all the oxygen.
Less ice also means lots of complications for fish reproduction too. Many species of fish including whitefish and lake trout rely on ice cover to protect “their eggs from dangerous winds or waves” (NWF). This results in mass egg mortality. If ice loss continues we risk losing our fish species and increased pollution in the lakes.
A loss of ice on the Great Lakes will also result in the loss of various cultural practices and also greatly affect industry surrounding the lakes. As the fish populations decrease, the multi-billion dollar (NWF) fishing industry is also affected in that every year there is a lower Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) in the fishery. There are also a number of winter-related sports and rituals that both tourists and locals partake including skiing, ice fishing, duck hunting, festivals, and snowmobiling that are all negatively affected by warming temperatures (and lack of ice). Anglers in particular have less and less stable ice to fish from and now employ the use of boats to get out to the same spots they used to be able to walk to (National Geographic).
On top of the recreational and cultural activities that have been diminished due to climate change, there is a general consensus that the warm days and lack of ice feel like something is wrong—indeed, there is something very wrong. One lifelong Upper Peninsula of Michigan resident, Kasey Spencer, summarizes beautifully, “When it’s cold, we’re miserable—but we’re also really happy… if we have a really warm winter, it feels like something is wrong.”
The Wolves of Isle Royale
I love this example so much. It brings in so many of the characters that I truly take pleasure in learning about—population genetics, wolves, moose, islands, wildlife conservation, and of course, ice. The Isle Royale is technically owned by Michigan, but it is closer to Thunder Bay, Canada than it is to Duluth, Minnesota. I’ve seen this island from the coast of Minnesota in Grand Marais where it looked isolated and frozen. Yet, there was a deep chasm of Lake Superior separating the island from the mainland where historically it would have been connected in the winter months by a thick layer of ice. Enter, wolves. They formed a population on the island back in the 1940s due to the ice bridge between the island and mainland (Wolves & Moose of Isle Royale Project). Wolves are a mammal species that relies on their dispersal system of males and females to new packs in new regions in order to maintain genetic diversity. The interactions between the ice bridge, the resident moose population, dispersing wolves, and lower tiers of the food chain ended up being one of the most studied predator-prey-environment relationships studied in all of science.
Despite the wolves being protected from human-wolf conflict in the Isle Royale National Park, the wolves began a precipitous decline to only nine wolves in 2014. Due to changing climatic temperatures, more and more years went by without the ice bridge connecting the wolves to other dispersing individuals. As a result, gene flow was cut off without ice. The wolves reproductive fitness was greatly decreased due to inbreeding depression. This began a great debate among scientists whether they should be hands off or aid in genetic rescue by transporting individuals in a form of ‘artificial dispersal.’ In the end, no rescue was made, and the population has completely died out. It remains to be seem what occurs to the Isle Royale ecosystem without its keystone predators.
The Ducks of Lake Erie
The Niagara River corridor stretching from Lake Ontario all the way through Lake Erie is known for the hundreds of thousands of overwintering ducks. These fish-eating birds forage in the open waters of the southern Great Lakes and in years that are particularly cold it becomes increasingly difficult for them to find food. Here is an example of weather lots of ice actually negatively effects wildlife. In 2014, we had a particularly cold year (hey same year as the ice storm…) where 92.2% of the Great Lakes were locked in ice. Another notable year was 1979 when 94.7% of the Great Lakes were frozen over according to federal wildlife biologist monitors (The Beacon Journal).
When there is so much ice, it is a hard winter for the ducks as they cannot find enough food to sustain their large flocks. Many of the ducks fled south into the interior of many of the Great Lakes states to search for food or attempted to subsist on the invasive zebra mussels. Birds were starving in the tens of thousands and were crowding small ponds or areas of the lake with open water. Carcasses littered the shores of lakes must have made a gruesome sight. Many open water species that are normally difficult to view from the shore, such as scoters, and some diving ducks, were way out of range due to their emergency irruption south.
A Little History of My Own… Winter in Minnesota
On the first of January 2021, my friends and I drove all the way to Duluth, Minnesota in order to enjoy the wildlife and weather of the boreal forest. We visited a series of locations along the coast of Lake Superior and interior of eastern Minnesota. I would call this trip an important part of my own personal history… I still have vivid dreams of the wildlife and sunsets and it is probably the most gorgeous place I have ever visited. I think of how my life has changed since it has been nearly a year since that trip. I have learned so much about myself and the world around me… while being completely awed at how vast creation is.
I have hundreds of photos of ice from this trip… it shows that ice is not only a force for nature and culture, but a force for beauty as well!
Blog Post 3 of 3:
A Brief History of Ice in Ohio’s Glaciers, Geobotany, and Human History
Exploring Ohio’s Climate and Ice through the Lens of Glaciers, Geobotany, and the “Little Ice Age” and My Field Trip to Spangler Park!
For this blog post, I took a field trip to Spangler Park, located north of Wooster in Northeast Ohio. Of course, I *accidently* planned it to coincide with a snowstorm so that I would get stuck for a while just watching the flakes fall. Again, the strange combination of the frantic flight of the snowflakes with absolutely no noise is something that is so fascinating to me.
There is actually a scientific explanation behind why snowstorms are so silent! There are two things that make snow silent—absorption and the curvature of the sound. A snowstorm is very good at absorbing sound. In the same way someone might line a room with foam to soak up sound you can do the same thing with snow. Foam and snow work this way because they have lots of tiny whole in them for air to fit into and for sound waves to travel in. The sound waves end up reverberating in the tiny gaps between the crystals of the snowflake which reduces volume (The Medium).
The other reason has to do with the storm itself. The sound that travels in a snowstorm tends to curve up and out back towards space because sound curves towards air that is colder. The ground air in a snowstorm is typically relatively warmer so the sound bends towards the colder air above us in the snowstorm. Cold air is inherently denser, and sound travels slower through more dense air masses which causes the direction of the sound wave to be bent or redirected entirely. Who knew?!
My Field Trip to Spangler Park
As usual, I was particularly enamored with some of the plants I found at Spangler Park. There was not much ice in the surrounding area besides some puddles and a stream at the based of the gorge. I had a great view of snowflakes during a snow squall.
There was certainly both curvature and absorption of sound at Spangler Park as it was nearly silent except for the soft settling of flakes among the leaves. There was still a high number of fern and small shrub greenery despite the fact that it was late November. The photos above were taken using the flash setting since it was already quite dark in the park. I was surprised how thick the snow was because by the end of our visit the snow had already accumulated around half an inch and it had only started as we had begun to walk back through the park. Spangler Park had really interesting rock formations (I don’t know enough about geology to tell you much yet!) and there were sharp cliffs surrounding the gorge trails. In some of the areas that weren’t quite as steep eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) had grown into the crevices of the hill. This is a conifer species that appreciates steep slopes that have their own cool microclimate in the summer. They are often found south of the glacial boundary.
A Brief Glacial History of Ohio
The Four Glaciers and How They Changed the Landscape
Nearly 2 million years ago, our climate cooled post-Cenozoic Era and large continent-sized blocks of ice (our glaciers!) began to accumulate in modern day Canada and the northern United States (Ohio History Central) . About 2/3rds of Ohio was covered by these glaciers as they cut through mountain, soil, and rock. It is incredible that ice is able to have such slow yet destructive and transformative power!
Our glaciers have come and gone along with the natural cyclical warming and cooling of our climate. There is a lot that is not understood about the periods of Ice Age in Ohio’s history. But we know that these time periods of lots of ice in the northern latitudes are due to the many changes in earth’s oceans, continental configuration, as well as the orbit and revolution around the sun (OHC).
Before our ice glaciers, Ohio was configured very differently than today. Our Great Lakes didn’t exist (thank you ice and thank you glaciers for the lakes!) and we had a giant ancient river known as the Teays (pronounced Taze) that flowed northward from modern day Virginia. The watersheds of various rivers and even the position and flow of the rivers themselves were changed dramatically every time the glaciers encroached on the landscape.
The general understanding is that there were four advances throughout the Pleistocene Era though science indicates that there may have been other smaller glacial events during this time as well. The four advances are named after states: Nebraskan, Kansan, Illinoian, and Wisconsinan (with the latter being the most recent). The Wisconsinan retreated over 18,000 years ago (not really that long if you think about it) and left a completely different landscape. The ice eventually melted and formed the Great Lakes in the form of glacial outwash and outwash deposits. Ice has been continually modifying the earth’s landscape throughout history as well as the plant and animal communities that live there.
In the figure below, the hashed line represents the southern approximate glacial boundary for both glaciers. The area in purple is the unglaciated part of Ohio, also often known as Ohio Appalachia. The blue area of the map is the glaciated area of Ohio. The pink represents the glacial area having a bedrock made mainly of a dominant limestone composite. The green represents a parent material created of sandstone. The different plant, liverwort, moss, and lichen species on each side represent species that are characteristic of the two different botanical/geographical regions of Ohio.
Ohio Geobotany: What sort of word is geobotany anyway? A hybrid of two! It refers to the study of plants in relation to how their distribution corresponds with their geological habitat and substrate.
In the same way that climate is so important for how the ecosystem functions, geology is also essential. Quote from blog on geobotany “The geology of Ohio can be neatly divided into two parts. The western part contains a substrate of mainly limestone (including dolomite) which isn’t very resistant to Ohio’s humid climate. As a a result erosion has take its toll in the west to form a relatively flat landscape (eroding over the last 200 million years).
By comparison, Eastern Ohio has a substrate of mainly sandstone which holds together better by forming a natural cement and is relatively resistant to erosion. Over time though, water can seep through and dissolve this cement which is why deep ravines can form in southeastern Ohio. The older limestone in the west is quite erodible while the newer sandstone in the east is more resistant to erosion overall. As a result, the west is mainly flat while the east has hills with steep sides and valleys formed by rivers.”
Enjoy some more photos of Spangler Park Flora and Ice:
The Little Ice Age
The Climatic Cooling from the 14th through the 19th Century
The Little Ice Age, according to modern climatologists, began in the early 1300s and ended in the second half of the 1800s. It follows the Medieval Warm Period that ended in 1200 and ends with the beginning of Industrialization and human caused global climate change. There is lots of physical evidence that there was a period of cooling in large regions of the world that is evident in the form tree rings, glacial growth, lake sediments, and cultural unrest (Eos Science News). Interestingly enough, the cool temperatures did not equally effect different parts of the world simultaneously and this ‘cool patch’ seemed to move to different regions throughout the centuries. Northwestern Europe and southeastern North America had their coolest temperatures during the 17th century while the eastern Pacific had their lowest averages in the 15th century.
There were many negative effects on humanity (especially in Europe) due to the lower than average temperatures because of the Little Ice Age. The high frequency of cold winters and colder, more moist summers led to lots of famine due to shorter growing seasons for crops. The reliance on the North Atlantic Cod fishery also caused Western Europe lots of issues in the 17th century since the colder ocean temperatures resulted in the temporary decline of the species’ population. More ice formed as well with the Alpine glaciers advancing far past normal limits and crunching everything in their path. Countries that already had glaciers, like France, Switzerland, and others, were inundated by ice that destroyed citizens’ property (Britannica).
Ice Blog Project Final Art Piece:
“Flight of the Canvasback”
The Canvasback (Aythya valisineria) is a large, diving duck that breeds mainly in western Canada and even into Alaska. Some Canvasback migrate through the Great Lakes region and some choose to overwinter on the waters of Lake Erie, Lake Michigan, and Lake Ontario. The ducks often feed in the center of the lakes in the winter where there is no ice, but if you’re luck you can see them pass by on the wing from the shoreline. During desperate times of food shortage due to much of the lakes being covered in ice, Canvasback may fly south and away from the lakes in search of food. The ice dunes of the Mentor Headlands Beach State Park are shown below. These ice ridges form from ice being washed up and then frozen to the shoreline. In the background of the headlands, one can see the Fairport Harbor Light illuminated by the gorgeous Lake Erie sunset.
Thank you for viewing my project on the “Story of Ice in the Great Lakes Region.” Keep exploring!
“Ice contains no future, just the past, sealed away. As if they’re alive, everything in the world is sealed up inside, clear and distinct. Ice can preserve all kinds of things that way – cleanly, clearly. That’s the essence of ice, the role it plays.”
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman