January 10, 2014: Giant ice balls on Lake Michigan
 

http://cellar.org/2014/iceballs.jpg

Make up your own punchline...

75 pound boulders the size of beach balls were washing up on the shores of Lake Michigan yesterday. You can kind of see how they're birthed by watching the video: massive chunks of ice are rolled around by the waves.



full story

Linky severed on the YouTube, here's another. Maybe not as good as the first one, but it shows the motion / action.

http://youtu.be/V5lYyZDmkts

hiya HitTheLake, thanks for the link to the video.

I found the sidebar in YouTube very interesting with several other seemingly related videos, same title, etc, but with nakey people in the screengrab thumbnail. B.Justin seems particularly desperate in this way...

anyhow, nice to see you!

Thanks Lake, I've put your vid inline in my post.

I found the "related videos" interesting as well. But I guess what can you expect when you're looking at an "ice balls" video. :D

I mean, my balls are pretty damn cool, and what not...

...but, they're not ice balls.

When I was a kid, a friend asked me if there was such a thing as dirty ice, with the idea in mind that any dirty part would always be melting off.
I asked him what about ice made with dirty water.
Sixty years later, these ice balls kind of prove the point.

The dirt in the ice balls is sand that is held in suspension by the wave action.

Hebe and I are tempted to make a stop on our way home from Chicago and see if we can see some.

... and the market for videos of them is gonna be pret-ty limited too. :eek:

The ice pancakes are really cool to watch, too.



Seems weird to me that the tumbling balls of ice would get bigger. It seems like they would get worn down, like how the tumbling action of a drum of rocks will make them smoother.

(Neither of the video links worked for me.)