Ice breaking

On a February evening in Buffalo Bill State Park, Cody geologist and photographer Gretchen Hurley captured the fascinating freeze-thaw transformation of water on a shoreline.

As the sun set and the moon rose, she wrote in an email, ethereal light cast over ice slabs on the surface of Buffalo Bill Reservoir and crystalline cylinders near the shore. 

Hunks of ice in the water become porous or “rotten” as they melt, she wrote, before producing what’s known as “candle ice” — a fibrous frozen structure oriented vertically through the ice column. 

“Observing these gorgeous ice formations has inspired me to learn more about the formation and deformation of ice on lakes and rivers in the West,” Hurley told WyoFile.  

Do you have a striking photo of winter in Wyoming? Submit high-resolution entries to WyoFile’s Cold Snap Challenge by emailing them to editor@wyofile.com under the subject line “Winter photos.” Be sure to tell us when and where the images were taken. We’ll gather the images and publish our favorites through the winter.