Thematic Challenge - Ephemeral Icicles

It's been several months since I last posted to this community, but I am back today to share a few photos for this week's thematic challenge: weather manifestations.

With each passing day, winter's hold over my region of the world continues to fade as it succumbs to the ever-encroaching warmth of spring. During these last few weeks, the air outside has teetered on the cusp of freezing such that afternoon rains turn to evening snowstorms only to melt once more in the morning's sun. As these fluctuating temperatures tease the coming of spring, they have also provided me with a few last minute reminders of the beauty that can be found in frozen forests.

Following a particularly large evening snowstorms a few weeks ago, I made my way down to a stream that cut through a valley in one of my favorite local parks. Once I had made it to the stream, I followed its winding bank across the valley floor until I came to a tree had toppled into the river as the steep sandy slope it had grown from gave way to the eroding bank below.

While much of the woods, unsheltered by the foliage that would soon come, lay exposed to the warmth of the sun, the particular bend in the stream where the tree had fallen was sheltered in the shade of the valley's high slope. While the majority of the snow from the storm the night before had already melted and trickled down to the stream below, the cool of the shade provided just enough shelter for a few frozen wonders to form. As the snowmelt made it way to the valley below, it inundated the stream. Making its way to the fallen tree, the quick-flowing water crashed into trunk, limbs, and branches alike, hurling little droplets of near-freezing water into the air before recrystallizing in the cool of the shade.

What struck me most about this particular arrangement of icicles was their elongated, teardrop-shaped forms, often adorned with small bulbs at their tips. I assume that these shapes were made as a result of the rapidly rising and falling water level in the stream, but how this resulted in the array of forms before me left me perplexed. Some remained attached to the tree above by connections so thin that, had I arrived only minutes later, they would have fallen into the rushing water below before I ever had the chance to snap a photo. While I have come across many icicles over the years, the ones I found on this particular day may be the most unique that I have yet seen.

A few weeks after finding these unique and delicate natural ice sculptures, another equally large evening snowstorm hit my hometown. Encouraged by my previous finds, I returned to the stream the next afternoon to find a brand new set of more typically shaped, but equally beautiful icicles adorning the same fallen tree.

Though the bitter cold of winter makes it my least favorite of the seasons, this experience was a powerful reminder that their is beauty to be found in nature regardless of what the weather may bring.

Two weeks later: