Shiny picture goodness

[unixronin]

Icicles are nothing new if you live in a northerly climate.  Our new house turns out to have an inadequately insulated roof¹, leading to some pretty sizeable ones.

This is one of the cooler ones.  It's outside the kitchen window, on the [north-facing] front of the house.  It's about two inches in diameter, and about eight feet long.  I haven't tried to get a photo of the entire icicle, because it's only when you look at it close up that you see how neat it is.

This happens on some stalactites, too, although of course it takes much longer to develop there.  There was a discussion a few months back in New Scientist about how and why it happens, but the long and the short of it is that the mechanism is still poorly understood, though it's believed to be related to periodic flow ripples.  Both stalactites and icicles are unstable with regard to ripple formation, though — once ripples begin to form, they tend to become more pronounced and seldom level out again.

[1]  A problem which we're going to have to address when money and weather permit, probably by having the roof re-insulated, although there is also the air-gap tandem roof approach.

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[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Cymru gives you a fried peanut.