These photos are from a few years agowhen a friend and I ventured out on the ice at Lake Audubon. As you can see, the ice was very thick at the time…nearly three feet in places! The slab pressed upward by the pressure ridge in the photo above is around twelve feet tall. Ice that thick is easily capable of supporting a vehicle or ice house. It would be nice to see it again.

North Dakota winters are not typically known for being photogenic.  I maintain that there’s plenty to see and photograph out there, it’s just a little more challenging to find.  I’ve been awfully busy this year and totally missed autumn, so I am hoping that winter provides me a respite and lots of opportunities to wield the cameras!

Sometimes winters in North Dakota can be a little dreary. Okay, maybe “often” would be a better term. Or “annually” perhaps. In any case, the sun does occasionally break through the gloom and splash a little color on the barn. I thought I’d share.

Since Bismarck-Mandan got cheated out of the heavy snow that was so ominously forecast, I thought I’d share a few pictures I took of the nasty spring storm we received in Bismarck-Mandan back in 1997. This was a particularly wicked storm, as the snow was very fine and icy. It packed in so tightly that the roads had to be cut open with snowblower-equipped payloaders, instead of simply plowed.

At the time I lived north of Century in the vicinity of Montreal Street. Since only the major roads were cut open, I had to hike around six blocks down to Century Avenue, where the big KFYR-TV 4×4 engineering truck was waiting to transport me to work. As you can imagine, we were pretty busy in a news capacity at that point.

It was a surreal walk down to Century Avenue. The snow was taller than even full size pickups parked along Montreal Street, and as I walked down the road I noticed that I wasn’t leaving any footprints. The snow was made of such fine snow crystals and packed so tightly that I wasn’t breaking through the surface. Every now and then I’d see part of a pickup cab poking up through the snow, but for the most part I couldn’t even tell where the street was, much less where cars were parked.

After the roads were beginning to clear, a crazy friend picked me up in his Escort GT and we went out to document the whole thing. At this time I had merely a little Canon point-and-shoot film camera, but I think it tells the story:

The perspective on this one is slightly misleading, since I was sitting in a compact car. But you get the idea.

As you can see from the walls of snow lining Century Avenue, these roads were literally cut open, as plowing would do no good. Not only was the snow too deep, but it was fine, compacted “sugar snow” composed of tiny little crystals. It was rock hard.

Since we were already into Spring, the sun started to work on the snowbanks right away. They’re melting down pretty quickly. We weren’t in a particularly low-riding car, but even along the Expressway the snow was taller than we were.

The fence along the Expressway was almost completely hidden by snow. Lots of places were packed in completely as the snow settled in and froze solid.

It was a Saturday storm, and I remember being quite put out at having some of my motorcycles stranded at the Hall of Ports for the annual Freedom Riders Motorcycle Show! At least I got to bring home some trophy hardware later.

Anyway…if you’re feeling slighted by the lack of tall snowbanks (especially after all the hype over the last few days), maybe this will help get you through it! And at least we’ve still got wind…

Thanks to Pat Benatar for a musical reference upon which to base the title of this post. I’ve shared a few images of ice-encrusted trees over the past few days, collected on my venture east of town Sunday afternoon. These fence photos are actually some of the first photos I grabbed on my way out.

The fences east of town looked downright globby in places, with the barbs completely encased in ice at times. As you can see, there was a lot of ice on everything; some of the barbs looked to have a half-inch of ice on them.

Those are an entirely different phenomenon than this, one of my favorite barbed wire photos from 2009. In this case the frost spikes were enormous too, but not nearly as encasing as the ice of last Friday.

Great…now I have the Charley Pride song stuck in my head after titling this post. I almost came home empty-handed in my search for cool photos of iced-up trees on Sunday; just as I got out the clouds rolled in and obscured the sun. I did see that frozen mitt from my previous post, but didn’t really see anything overwhelming in the trees. But then, on my way home, I spotted this.

As you can see, the sun wasn’t giving up so easily. It managed to burn its way through the haze and clouds intermittently, which required some near-frostbitten patience from yours truly. It was absolutely critical to wait until the sun was shining behind this ice in order to highlight it, and I was willing to wait.

I tell my little boys that a sunny day does not always equal a warm one. It did, however, equal a great photo opportunity for a fleeting moment…one in which I was poised and ready to capture a few shots.

The ice that adorned these branches is gone now, so I am glad I was able to sneak out and catch a glimpse. Of course, the best part of seeing such a sight is sharing it with others; that’s the reason I got my cameras in the first place. I’m naturally curious to begin with, and the nature of my work so often puts me in places where I get to see things most people don’t get to see. I think that’s why so many people in law enforcement pick up photography as a hobby, by the way.

I have one more set of icy photos from the day, and I think I’ll post them pretty soon. This storm really provided ample opportunity!