Ice, Snow and Water and very Large Large Ice Rings
The following are a spectular group of pictures of ring structures. They were taken by Richard Paradis on the early to mid morning of March 28, 2002. The formations were spotted by Ian Worley as he flew over Shelburne Pond (Vermont). Realising that this was something unusual he called Richard Paradis who met him at the airport with cameras. These are, by far, the most complex and detailed pictures of this ice condition that I have seen.
Giant rings are fairly common (we saw then in 2017 and 2018)
Richard is a lecturer emeritus in Environmental Studies at UVM. Ian is a lecturer emeritus in Environmental Studies, Botany at UVM.
Note: Jan 26, 2020
This page is only partially finished there are several other pages in this section on lake stars and ice rings. Rings and stars are part of the same process and occur on snow ice that is usually on top of a clear ice bottom layer.
The rough scale is 1"=20 ft
The above image shows what I believe are some rupture structures. The bunched white lines look like they are compssion ruptured. The rupture axis is about 10:00. The ice appears to be very weak and may be partially frozen 'snow fall ice'. (ice that comes from snow falling directly into water). The structues are bright white because of air either from compression cracks or rubble from crushing.
The bird like claw like structure appears to be spreading out in partially frozen snow fall icein the smooth dark grey and light greay in the lower left part of the image. The claw like features appears to be spreading as it is less bound by the slush domains of the ring families.
