See an icicle grow
February 23, 2012 @ 11:04 am — Tags: landscape, snow, St Jean de Sixt, winter
This icicle appeared outside my window last week. Icicles look still, but as you can see from the time-lapse in the photo, they’re constantly on the move. This one shifted sideways as well as growing substantially throughout the day. My camera was on a tripod, so all the movement you see is real – as are the amazing colours reflected through the icicle as the day goes by.
Saint-Jean-de-Sixt does get the odd icicle, but they rarely last long at such a low altitude (the village is around 900 metres above sea level). Indeed, this one smashed before 8pm despite the cooler evening weather. It had grown for almost two days from the snow melting off the roof, and eventually became too heavy for the weakened, warming roof snow to support.
Even frozen stuff isn’t truly frozen.
What a great series of photos. It makes perfect sense but I never realised that icicles must grow like that in their lifetime. Very cool.
Very nice idea, and a fascinating study in light changes too. At first I thought you’d zoomed in half way through, then realised that was the skiing break (hard life) and that it had grown amazingly!
Thanks to both of you. Yeah, it was a toss-up of lifestyle or SLR with built-in time delay. I miss the time delay…