Mysterious series of circles discovered atop frozen Alaska lake. What is causing it?
Many a science-fiction story was birthed from ice, so it’s easy to be unsettled at photos from Alaska showing concentric circles spread hundreds of feet across a frozen lake.
Author and ice rescue instructor Luc Mehl reports he discovered the mysterious formations while ice skating with a friend atop Big Lake, about 60 miles north of Anchorage.
A drone revealed multiple formations in the ice, including one that exceeded 50 rings and nearly 300 feet across, Mehl told McClatchy News. The ice was about 10 inches thick at the time, he adds.
“The scale of these ice patterns was impossible to grasp from the ground. We saw some stripes here and there, some circles. We had no idea that we were skating over all of these amazing features,” Mehl said.
“There is a whole story in the surface of the ice, but I had no idea it was there until I got the view from the drone. I’ve always thought of ice as uniform — that is part of the appeal, easy gliding — but these patterns totally caught me off guard.”
The circles were so “uniform,” his initial impression was that they represented “a pulse of ... something.”
He shared multiple photos on social media, igniting a series of theories. Some suspected the circles resulted from a “huge gas bubble” that emerged from the lake bed, while others wondered if something mysterious caused the surface of a frozen lake to ripple.
One commenter even suggested “harmonic waves” cracked the ice.
“The most popular theory is that the weight of snow on thin ice depresses the ice and promotes water flow up through holes,” Mehl wrote in a blog.
“The additional water/slush weight on the thin ice causes more sagging and initiates a circumferential (ring) crack. Water can seep up through the crack, saturate the snow, and trigger the next crack in a cascading expanding series of rings.”
He’s not completely convinced that’s the answer. Each of the theories seem to have a gap in logic, Mehl says.
“In a way, I appreciate that there isn’t an easy way to explain how these patterns formed,” he says.
“I was filled with awe looking down and trying to make sense of these rings, circles, and other patterns. I still don’t understand how those patterns formed, but I kind of appreciate that the ice keeps some secrets.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2023 at 3:09 PM with the headline "Mysterious series of circles discovered atop frozen Alaska lake. What is causing it?."