It was surprisingly warm today in Chicago… when I left work and got in my car to start my drive, the car’s thermometer said it was 93-degrees!!!

With the storms brewing throughout Wisconsin, the clouds rolled in threatening a storm in my path. Luckily, the storm passed by me as though I was at the tail-end of the storm. A few drizzles… and a temperature drop of over 30-degrees!!!

I know I’ve posted a video about incredible murmurations of starlings before. But this one is pretty incredible! Nature photographer Dylan Winter captured these amazing images of a huge starling murmuration. And just what is a murmuration you may ask?…

murmuration |ËŒmÉ™rməˈrāSHÉ™n| – noun literary
1. the action of murmuring: the murmuration of a flock of warblers.
2. rare a flock of starlings.

In layman’s terms… they’re the really cool formations that float & blend through the sky when a HUGE flock of birds get together and throw a party!!!

Click here for Dylan Winter’s video on YouTube.

The sunrise never quite came out today. It tried… it thought about it.

Instead, we got a kind of pastel, layered sunrise hovering low on the horizon adding to a beautiful reflection downtown.

The lake might have been melted around Montrose Harbor, but up my Bryn Mawr it was a much different story. Huge frozen shards piled up all along the lakefront… with more icebergs floating out past the wreckage!

The clouds moved in, grew dark and I got one last dramatic shot as I prepared to pedal home…

Sure, I’ve been enjoying the beautiful icicles & formations on my back porch.
Admiring & sharing. Embracing the cold. Appreciating nature.

I never really imagined what was happening three floors down… SOLID ICE!!!
Well, today I finally went around to take a look at the not-so-pretty side of the ice.

Apparently the gutters are frozen and overflowing, creating cascading waterfalls freezing down the sides of our building…. and piling up all over our back porch steps. Treacherous. It’s going to take quite awhile for this mess to melt away!

And it’s not only the main stairs… it’s the steps going down to the basement as well. Those steps are covered over with inches of ice, and end in a solid sheet of ice! Ice everywhere. Get your skates ready!!!

When I got into the studio this morning, I opened my stuff and pulled out my Netflix movie envelopes. Keep in mind that my queue has been long for a long amount of time. I’ve pretty much forgotten what I’ve put on the list. And I’m frequently surprised when I open the envelope. Well, today was one of those days.

After a couple days of really cool (and somewhat dangerous) ice formations on my back porch, I chuckled to myself when I saw the title of the first movie – “Chasing Ice.” It’s a documentary about how the glaciers are receding all around the world. And my thought was “Sure, and now they’re all covering Chicago!!!” Timing is everything!

The movie is a beautiful. Environmental photographer James Balog started by photographing the beauty & majesty of glaciers & frozen formations. As he continued over the years, he could see that the glaciers were slowly disappearing. And he set out to document the geological change. He deployed time-lapse cameras to capture a record of the world’s changing glaciers, compressing years into seconds to illustrate how these ice mountains are disappearing at a breathtaking rate. The videos are amazing, beautiful & sad. The comparisons between years are shocking.

The movie starts out with some breathtaking photography – which I’m sure is the reason I added it to my Netflix queue in the first place. Soon enough you become enthralled by his passion & adventure to capture the glacial changes with time-lapse photography. Regardless of which side you are on in the Global Warming debate, these images are hard to dispute. I’m just glad I rode my bike through Glacier National Park when there were still glaciers there!!!

Click here to see the official trailer for “Chasing Ice.”

And here are just a few of the stunning images from the documentary…

I can always tell when it’s a bit cold outside
when my dining room windows freeze over.
Yep, that would be today!!!

And just for the record, the ice is forming on the exterior storm window.
NOT my interior window to the dining room. Still toasty warm inside!!!