MICHIGAN – Ice volcanoes. Yes, they are a thing.
While they don’t spew lava like the volcanoes often making news headlines, this winter phenomena is quite literally a cool sight to see.
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Along the Great Lakes during the winter months if it’s cold enough for a period of time and the waves crash hard enough along the shoreline, ice volcanoes can form. Some are small, but others can be quite large.
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Eric Kuipers lives 20 miles away from Lake Michigan and usually sees ice volcanoes form every winter along the 2nd and 3rd sandbars. Kuipers, a former meteorology major at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and avid hiker, says he spent many winters as a kid exploring with his parents and seeing the large mounds where it would normally be flat around the lake.
In years past, Kuipers says he’s seen some amazingly large ice volcanoes. “I’ve explored tunnels that the waves carve and looked up in caves to see the blowhole in the ceiling where the water/ice would explode out” recalls Kuipers.
It’s a process for large ice volcanoes to form. First, it needs to be cold enough for ice to form on the shore of the lake. Water has to then break the surface of the ice.
The waves have to be large and pack a punch to force through the channels. It like a chute. The water squeezes upward and then shoots the floating ice upward. This continues and a cone develops.
Over time if it stays cold enough and the waves are strong, large cones form into what looks like a volcano. Hence, the term ice volcano.
“The tallest “ice volcanoes” I’ve seen were about 25 feet tall on the southern shore of Lake Superior around Munising, MI,” recalls Kuipers.
Although the experienced hiker has explored his fair share of ice volcanoes, Kuipers says it can be quite dangerous.
“The side facing the open lake is often dangerously steep, sometimes a sheer cliff up to 20ft tall. It gives me chills looking down at the frigid water and thinking if I slip, there’s no getting out,” he said, “the shore side is a more gradual slope, due to the water spraying out of the cone, getting carried by the wind, and freezing on contact.”
Typically smaller ice volcanoes are seen in the early winter months.
Kuipers says he and his friend Candis Collick who take pictures of the features, haven’t seen many this year due to near record warm temperatures in December and the lack of snow. There were smaller ones photographed on Drummond Island yesterday.
Shore ice hasn’t formed in southern Michigan yet. “Typically mid-late February is the best bet for seeing ice formations,” says Kuipers.
Sure, these volcanoes aren’t shooting molten lava out of the top of a crater, but Kuipers urges those who may visit and plan on looking for ice volcanoes to be very careful.
Ice is nothing to joke about.
“There’s a saying around here that ice is never 100% safe, and that’s especially true around these features. Ice formation can be terribly unequal,” Kuipers said, “temperature fluctuations, sunshine, wind, waves, snowfall, water currents...all of these affect the stability of ice.”
Kuipers mentioned that snow will fill in the hole on the top of an ice volcano, or a thin layer of ice will form across it as the waves subside and this can be a misleading danger. “
It looks no different than the rest of the ice, so you climb to the top to be king of the hill, a childhood favorite, and down the hole you go! If there’s solid ice below you, not a huge deal,” said Kuipers, “if there’s 32 degree open water underneath, it quickly becomes an un-survivable situation.”