Our recent cold weather is leading to Lake Superior forming some new ice during the winter of 2023. Aside from a handful of days, this winter has largely been pretty warm, so there hasn't been a ton of ice formation going on out on Gitche Gumee.

While a vast majority of the lake is still wide open, areas along the shoreline, particularly in bays, are seeing ice development. The satellite image at the top of the page shows all of Lake Superior just after 1 pm today (January 30). Most of what you see over the lake is fog/sea smoke from the frigid air blowing across the open lake. There are some areas forming ice, however.

Take the head of the lake near Duluth, for example. A few sheets of ice have developed offshore, mostly covering an area from Superior to around the Port Wing area in Wisconsin.

NOAA
NOAA
loading...

Similarly, you can see some pretty solid ice built in by Ashland, up the Bayfield Peninsula toward Bayfield.

Quick Country 96.5 logo
Get our free mobile app

Heading further north, however, is where something really weird showed up on NOAA's satellite images of Lake Superior. About 30 miles northeast of Grand Portage on the North Shore, coming out of the bay that Thunder Bay calls home, an ice formation drifted out of the bay.

In the first image, captured around 11 am on January 30, shows a chunk of ice floating away from the bay into the lake, taking somewhat of a head shape. Things really develop over the next couple of hours.

NOAA
NOAA
loading...

In the next satellite image, captured just after 1 pm, you see what looks like a face really take shape.

NOAA
NOAA
loading...

Pretty wild, right? Here, I'll zoom in even further to give you the full effect. Eyes? Check. Mouth? Check. Depending on how you look at it, the whole ice formation looks like a head, but there's a second head in the image too. If you look at the right side of the head, it looks like a side-profile of a face too, doesn't it? The right eye would be the eye of the side profile, and there's even what looks like a little nose and mouth protruding from the right side of the formation.

NOAA
NOAA
loading...

Those familiar with the area might know that this giant face appeared just offshore from the "Sleeping Giant", a unique rock formation on the peninsula to the upper right of the ice formation.

I know what you're thinking - "this was Photoshopped". If you want proof for yourself, here's a link to the satellite image right from NOAA.

While there has been ice flowing out of the bay for the last couple of days, this afternoon is when the formation truly took shape. Unfortunately, there are only two images captured today, so there isn't a lot to compare to see how much it changed over the course of the day. We'll see what (if anything) is there Tuesday.

Leading Theories About D.B. Cooper and 30 other unsolved mysteries

Thanks to the American fascination with confounding unsolved cases, mystery is among the most popular genres of books, movies, and television. From heists and capers to murders and robberies, the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries spark media frenzies that grab headlines around the globe. Some cases compel so much public intrigue that the facts and theories surrounding them become the basis of books, movies, plays, and documentaries decades or even centuries after the cases go cold.

More From Quick Country 96.5