Ice Spike

Lore & Background

Ice spikes have been reported as a rare natural phenomenon for decades. In the early 20th century, O. Bally and H.E. Dorsey independently proposed the mechanism now known as the Bally–Dorsey model. While often associated with small bodies of water like bird baths where freezing is rapid, they can appear on larger frozen surfaces. A notable account from 1963 by Canadian Gene Heuser described hiking across frozen Lake Erie and seeing 'small pinholes' through which water was forced under pressure to spout up, creating five-foot-high (1.5 m) 'frozen spurts that looked to him like telephone poles standing straight up all over the lake'. These formations can vary in shape; beyond the classic spike, they have been reported as ice candles, towers, vases, or even inverted pyramids. The formation process relies on water expanding by 9% upon freezing. If a small hole remains in an otherwise frozen surface, expanding water below pushes up through it. As the extruded water hits cold air, its edges freeze while the center stays liquid, creating successive layers of ice that grow upward into a tube.

In Their Own Story

In 1963, Gene Heuser was hiking across frozen Lake Erie when he encountered an unusual sight: five-foot-high 'frozen spurts' rising from the ice. He reported seeing small pinholes through which water below was periodically forced under pressure to spout into the air and freeze, creating formations that resembled telephone poles standing straight up all over the lake. This event highlighted a particularly large manifestation of a phenomenon usually seen only as small spikes in centimeters or inches. The source notes that while spikes are often found in containers like pet bowls where water freezes quickly, natural occurrences on large bodies of water are rare and sometimes take unexpected shapes like inverted pyramids. Scientists have since used photographs from the internet and artificial methods—freezing distilled water in domestic refrigerators—to study these formations, confirming the Bally–Dorsey model while raising new questions about how such spikes form in impure natural waters.

Reader's Guide

To understand ice spike formation, one must observe the expansion of water by 9% as it freezes. The process typically begins when surface water nucleates around irregularities at a container wall. If the crystal's c-axis is not vertical, basal planes intersect the surface along lines perpendicular to the axis, causing ice needles to propagate across the surface and leave only a small triangular hole (often formed by crystallite curtains joining at 60-degree angles). As freezing continues below, water is pushed up through this hole. If the extrusion rate matches the freezing rate at the lip, an upward-growing tube forms with hexagonal or triangular cross-sections. Artificially, these can be grown using distilled water in plastic ice cube trays; impurities in non-distilled water inhibit formation by concentrating in the unfrozen droplet and reducing the freezing rate. In nature, exceptionally large spikes may require mechanisms like convective flow to remove impurities. As of 2013, photographs of natural spikes had appeared online, allowing scientists at Caltech under Kenneth G. Libbrecht to test these hypotheses in laboratory settings.

Did You Know?

• Ice spikes can take the shape of inverted pyramids or be variously reported as ice candles, towers, or vases due to a lack of standard nomenclature.
• In 1963, Gene Heuser observed five-foot-high (1.5 m) 'frozen spurts' on frozen Lake Erie that resembled telephone poles standing straight up.
• Water expands by exactly 9% as it freezes, which is the driving force pushing water up through a small hole to form the spike.
• Experiments show that spikes are less likely to form in ice cubes made from non-distilled water because impurities inhibit growth.
• The Bally–Dorsey model for ice spike formation was proposed in the early 20th century but was not tested in a laboratory setting for many years.