What's a bigger bummer than rain on a parade? Rain, and 54-degree temperatures, on a winter ice festival.
But the 38th Annual Plymouth Ice Festival will go on this weekend, despite weather conditions more May than January, festival organizer James Gietzen said. The event features ornate ice sculptures, ice-carving competitions and more.
It doesn't take a science expert to know ice starts to melt in warmer-than-freezing temperatures — and the higher the temperature, the more rapid and more extensive the melting. But the Free Press went to science experts, anyway.
Air temperature is the biggest factor in ice melting, but sunshine and rainfall contribute as well, said Jia Wang, an ice climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor.
Sunshine brings energy — heat — to the surfaces it shines upon. And rain, being warmer than freezing, also transfers its heat onto the surfaces with which it comes into contact, Wang said.
The Plymouth Ice Festival will combat the warmth and rain with tents, tarps and dry ice, Gietzen said. Blocks of ice won't be taken out of refrigeration until right before carving, and all but the largest sculptures will be in tents, not exposed to the rain.
Packing the festival ice in dry ice — frozen carbon dioxide at a temperature of minus-109.3 Fahrenheit — before use also helps, Gietzen said. And there's a lot more going on with the festival that's not dependent upon typical January-in-Michigan weather, he said.
"We should still have ice standing Sunday," he said.
This winter has been warmer than usual because of atmospheric patterns influenced by warm water in the Pacific Ocean, Wang said.
"So far, we still have no ice cover on the Great Lakes — even Lake Superior. It’s very unusual," he said.
Kyle Klein, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in White Lake, said that with the exception of a couple of frigid days here and there, a pattern has dominated so far this winter that keeps the coldest, Arctic air away from southern Michigan.
"That air has been mainly up in Canada," he said. "The general flow across North America has been west to east, with not a lot of waves in the pattern."
The relatively balmy temps Saturday are the result of a low-pressure system in the southern Plains states, rushing up to Michigan warm air from the south, and a lot of moisture, Klein said.
Events in Plymouth begin Friday at 7 p.m. and run through Sunday afternoon. For more, go to plymouthicefestival.com.
Contact Keith Matheny: 313-222-5021 or kmatheny@freepress.com. Follow on Twitter @keithmatheny.
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