A photo of tiny wind-sculpted sand towers, the tallest standing no more than a foot high, along the shoreline of Lake Michigan is now an Internet sensation.
The tiny towers captured by photographer Joshua Nowicki were likely created by winds and water working on layers of sand frozen by low temperatures, in much the same way a river will carve a canyon into the surface of the land, experts suggest.
Nowicki, of St. Joseph, Mich., says he's seen the wind create unusual shapes on the Lake Michigan shoreline before, but nothing quite like what he found at Silver Beach County Park while he was shooting photos of a lighthouse.
What he found on Valentine's Day, created by 50-mph winds in single-digit temperature, were miniature versions of famous sandstone formations seen in Utah known as hoodoos.
"I couldn't believe how many there were," Nowicki said. "I was just delighted. The tallest ones were over a foot tall."
He quickly snapped some photos of the towers that, because they were so small, were quickly melting away, even in the prevailing blizzard conditions.
Most had disappeared by the time Nowicki, a graduate of Western Michigan University (WMU), was ready to shoot a second round of images.
"When the sun came out, they melted down," he says. "By the next day they were gone."
The Lake Michigan hoodoo formations were "erosional remnants, frozen water-saturated beach sand areas left after thawed beach sand has been blown away by the wind," explained WMU geosciences professor David Barnes.
