April 14, 2013 - Spring in Northern Minnesota

Spring officially started over three weeks ago, but here in northern Minnesota we still have more than a foot of snow on the ground. Our lake is still covered with 27 inches of ice! In our front yard, the Red Squirrels made tunnels under the snow. It’s no coincidence that the tunnels come to the surface right under our bird feeders. Here’s one of the squirrels popping up to look around.

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Here’s the view out our kitchen window. These are icicles hanging from our roof. No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. Some of them are parallel to the ground; some have 90 degree bends in them; some are curved. I’ll see if I can explain how this happened.

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This photo of our house was taken two winters ago. We have a metal roof and I included this photo to show how the snow sticks together and very slowly moves down the roof and curls under when it comes to the edge.

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Here’s a view of the front of our house, taken yesterday. Temperatures this weekend have been right around freezing, so some of the snow on the roof has started melting. However, it’s been just cold enough to form icicles. The icicles start out hanging straight down, like they should.

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This picture was taken looking up at the underside of our roof. The silver strip in the center is the edge of the metal roof. As the snow curls around the edge of the roof, the icicles also curve around and start pointing toward the house. But, the melting continues. As the water runs down the icicle, it freezes and points toward the ground. This causes a bend in the icicle.

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Here’s the view from another window on the back of the house. Several icicles are parallel to the ground! The melting and freezing has provided us with some very interesting icicle patterns this year.

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