C: Is for Climate Out of Control?

As most of the country is experiencing spring Michigan has had the coldest winter in decades. Water expands to freeze, and at Mackinaw City the water in Lake Huron below the surface ice was supercooled. It expanded to break through the surface ice and froze into this incredible wave. I've seen pictures of this wave phenomena in Antarctica , but in Michigan ? Yes, it's been quite a winter!

This was sent to me in an e-mail and my original column was going to be about this. A major newspaper wrote this story, however while doing research I found the origin and discovered these are not from Michigan but Antarctica. The pictures look really amazing. The ice formations are not waves but large areas of ice that have been formed into wave-like shapes by the elements, mostly melting. The additional “ice wave” look is due to icicles on the edges of the ice. The Urban Legends and Snoops Reference Pages explain the pictures and mentions that they were originally claiming to be arctic “ice waves” but due to Michigan’s cold winter, the text was updated to a Lake Huron phenomenon.

These sites are a wonderful place to research stories passed along via the internet. I’ve used it to look up the validity of stories forwarded to my email account. Some frauds such as, the Michigan “ice waves”, are harmless and obviously not real but some misinformation can be more troublesome. The site clarifies rumors about politicians, celebrities, news stories, children abductions and events. In a recent top 15 list of the “hottest urban legends”, they dispel a number of rumors and validate others. They address a list of Barack Obama rumors, gas pump beliefs, rumors about Social Security and many other timely stories in need of verification. The site lists research materials for anyone that wants to verify the information themselves.

To see these pictures and more log onto www.astro.caltech.edu/%7Etonyt/Domec/ Though it is an urban legend, nature is an awesome phenomenon and that is a F.A.C.T. you can count on.