The above image shows a good example of crepuscular rays. The name comes from their typical appearance during crepuscular hours (those around dawn and dusk), when the contrasts between light and dark are the most obvious. Crepuscular comes from the Latin word “crepuscular” meaning twilight.
Steam from a nearby paper mill in Whiting, Wisconsin coated the surrounding trees with delicate hoar frost while filling the atmosphere with ice crystal that transformed the early morning light into a wonderful array of colors.
Wisconsin is the home of over 10,000 lakes, nearly all of them owe their existence to glacial action. Some 15,000 years ago, Wisconsin was partially covered by a great glacier. As the glacier retreated, huge chunks of ice were left behind. Some of these ice chunks formed depressions in the landscape that then became our lakes.
As the glacier melted, it released torrents of meltwater that contained huge amount of rock debris. This till covers our post-glacier landscape and is most evident on the retreating side of terminal moraines. If the rubble surrounded dead ice, a kettle formed. Almost by definition, the depth of our kettle lakes can be no greater than the surrounding till. Typically the lake is not as deep as the surrounding till as glacial till tends to have over topped the dead ice and erosion subsequently accumulated on the lake bottom.
Many of today’s kettle lakes have no supply of surface water so the lake levels are dependent on the ground water. As ground water levels fluctuate, so do the water levels in the lake. Eventually erosion will fill the kettle leaving a meadow that overtime will become forested.