Wind-Blown Ice Creates Frigid Fingers Over Lake Michigan

One of the reasons NASA's Earth Observatory Image of the Day--and there are many--is at the top of my feed reader is that sometimes they teach me a whole thing I knew nothing about. Like ice stringers! That picture was taken by an astronaut on board the International Space Station, and shows some small islands in Lake Michigan (for a sense of scale, the long skinny one on the right is Detroit Island, which is about 7 km (4.5 miles) long). The islands are connected by thick ice floating on the la...